In general the chest was empty. Viellard used to
remonstrate but without effect. The day perhaps after his orders had been
dishonoured he gave new ones.'
'Is it true,' I asked, 'that the civil list is a couple of years' income
in debt?'
I know nothing about it,' said Beaumont; 'in fact, nobody knows anything
about anything, but it is highly probable. Everybody who asks for
anything gets it, everybody is allowed to waste, everybody is allowed to
rob, every folly of the Empress is complied with. Fould raised
objections, and was dismissed.
'She is said to have a room full of revolutionary relics: there is the
bust of Marie Antoinette, the nose broken at one of the sacks of the
Tuileries. There is a picture of Simon beating Louis XVII. Her poor child
has been frightened by it, and she is always dwelling on the dangers of
her position.'
'So,' I said, 'did Queen Adelaide--William IV.'s Queen. From the passing
of the Reform Bill she fully expected to die on the scaffold.'
'There is more reason,' he answered, 'for the Empress's fears.'
'Not,' I said, 'if she fears the scaffold. Judicial murder, at least in
that form, is out of fashion.
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