The French appreciated this too late."

The professor replaced Malus and the essay on him in the ten-sous
stall, without remarking how often hope had been lit and extinguished
alternately in the gray eyes of an old woman seated on a stool in an
angle of the quay.

"He was there," Marmus said, pointing to the Tuileries on the opposite
bank of the river. "I saw him reviewing his sublime troops! I saw him
thin, ardent as the sands of Egypt; but, as soon as he became Emperor,
he grew fat and good-natured, for all fat men are excellent--this is
why Sinard is thin, he is a gall-making machine. But would Napoleon
have supported my theory?"



V

FIRST COURSE

It was the hour at which they went to the dinner table in the house of
Marmus's sister-in-law. The professor walked slowly toward the Chamber
of Deputies, asking himself if his theory might have had Napoleon's
support. He could no longer judge Napoleon save from that point of
view. Did Napoleon's genius coincide with that of Marmus in regard to
the assimilation of things engendered by an attraction perpetual and
continuous?