Crown had him warned that the authorities would prosecute him for "illegal" wearing of this decoration. When this notice was conveyed to him through an officious intermediary, Pontmercy retorted with a bitter smile:
"I do not know whether I no longer understand French, or whether you no longer speak it; but the fact is that I do not understand."
Then he went out for eight successive days with his rosette.
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.