succeeded his grandfather Louis XIV.!" As he was finishing this wonderful speech, a _gendarme_ entered the dining room, asked for Colonel Fougas, and handed him a letter from the Minister of War.
"Gad!" cried the Marshal, "it would be pleasant to have your promotion arrive at the end of such a discourse.

For once, we would prostrate ourselves before your star! The Magi kings would be nowhere compared with us." "Read it yourself," said he to the Marshal, holding out to him the great sheet of paper.

"But no! I have always looked Death in the face; I will not turn my eyes away from this paper thunder if it is killing me.
"COLONEL: "In preparing the Imperial decree which elevated you to the rank of brigadier general, I found myself in the presence of an insurmountable obstacle: viz., your certificate of birth.

It appears from that document that you were born in 1789, and that you have already passed your seventieth year.

Now, the limit of age being fixed at sixty years for colonels, sixty-two for brigadier generals and sixty-five for generals of division, I find myself under the absolute necessity of placing you upon the retired list with the rank of colonel.