"Was he in the Guard ?" "Yes," replied Monsieur Hochon.

"Carpentier was, in 1810, sergeant-major in the dragoons; then he rose to be sub-lieutenant in the line, and subsequently captain of cavalry." "Giroudeau may know him," thought Philippe.
"This Monsieur Carpentier took the place in the mayor's office which Gilet threw up; he is a friend of Monsieur Mignonnet." "How can I earn my living here ?" "They are going, I think, to establish a mutual insurance agency in Issoudun, for the department of the Cher; you might get a place in it, but the pay won't be more than fifty francs a month at the outside." "That will be enough." At the end of a week Philippe had a new suit of clothes,--coat, waistcoat, and trousers,--of good blue Elbeuf cloth, bought on credit, to be paid for at so much a month; also new boots, buckskin gloves, and a hat.

Giroudeau sent him some linen, with his weapons and a letter for Carpentier, who had formerly served under Giroudeau.

The letter secured him Carpentier's good-will, and the latter presented him to his friend Mignonnet as a man of great merit and the highest character.

Philippe won the admiration of these worthy officers by confiding to them a few facts about the late conspiracy, which was, as everybody knows, the last attempt of the old army against the Bourbons; for the affair of the sergeants at La Rochelle belongs to another order of ideas.
Warned by the fate of the conspiracy of the 19th of August, 1820, and of those of Berton and Caron, the soldiers of the old army resigned themselves, after their failure in 1822, to await events.