They dared not interfere with him. Two or three times the Minister of War and the general in command of the department wrote to him with the following address: A Monsieur le Commandant Pontmercy."
He sent back the letters with the seals unbroken.
At the same moment, Napoleon at Saint Helena was treating in the same fashion the missives of Sir Hudson Lowe addressed to General Bonaparte.
Pontmercy had ended, may we be pardoned the expression, by having in his mouth the same saliva as his Emperor.
In the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian prisoners who refused to salute Flaminius, and who had a little of Hannibal''s spirit.
One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets of Vernon, stepped up to him, and said:
"Mr. Crown Attorney, am I permitted to wear my scar?"
He had nothing save his meagre half-pay as chief of squadron. He had hired the smallest house which he could find at Vernon. He lived there alone, we have just seen how.
Under the Empire, between two wars, he had found time to marry Mademoiselle Gillenormand. The old bourgeois, thoroughly indignant at bottom, had given his consent with a sigh, saying:
"The greatest families are forced into it." In 1815, Madame Pontmercy, an admirable woman in every sense, by the way, lofty in sentiment and rare, and worthy of her husband, died, leaving a child.