emphasized the frank expression of a thoroughly soldierly countenance,
with a broad, high forehead, an aquiline nose, and bright red lips.
Montcornet's manner, stamped with a certain superiority due to the
habit of command, might please a woman sensible enough not to aim at
making a slave of her husband. The Colonel smiled as he looked at the
lawyer, one of his favorite college friends, whose small figure made
it necessary for Montcornet to look down a little as he answered his
raillery with a friendly glance.

Baron Martial de la Roche-Hugon was a young Provencal patronized by
Napoleon; his fate might probably be some splendid embassy. He had won
the Emperor by his Italian suppleness and a genius for intrigue, a
drawing-room eloquence, and a knowledge of manners, which are so good
a substitute for the higher qualities of a sterling man. Through young
and eager, his face had already acquired the rigid brilliancy of
tinned iron, one of the indispensable characteristics of diplomatists,
which allows them to conceal their emotions and disguise their
feelings, unless, indeed, this impassibility indicates an absence of
all emotion and the death of every feeling. The heart of a diplomate
may be regarded as an insoluble problem, for the three most
illustrious ambassadors of the time have been distinguished by
perdurable hatreds and most romantic attachments.

Martial, however, was one of those men who are capable of reckoning on
the future in the midst of their intensest enjoyment; he had already
learned to judge the world, and hid his ambition under the fatuity of
a lady-killer, cloaking his talent under the commonplace of mediocrity
as soon as he observed the rapid advancement of those men who gave the
master little umbrage.