The business was thus carried through. But he still had other fears. He was afraid that the sum of five hundred thousand francs would appear rather excessive to the indemnity commission, for a house which was notoriously only worth two hundred thousand. The formidable rise in the value of buildings had not then taken place. An inquiry would have caused him to run the risk of serious unpleasantness. He recalled his brother's words: "No noisy scandal or I shall suppress you;" and he knew that Eugène was the man to put his threat into execution. It was necessary to blindfold the gentlemen forming the commission and to ensure their good will. He cast his eyes on two influential men whom he had made his friends by the way in which he saluted them in the passages whenever he met them. The thirty-six members of the municipal council were carefully selected by the Emperor himself from a list drawn up by the prefect comprising the senators, deputies, lawyers, doctors, and great manufacturers who prostrated themselves the most devotedly before the power that was; but amongst them all Baron Gouraud and Monsieur Toutin-Laroche especially deserved the good will of the Tuileries by their fervour. All Baron Gouraud's history is contained in this short biography: made a baron by Napoleon I. for supplying bad biscuits to the grand army, he had successively been a peer under Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis-Philippe, and he was now a senator under Napoleon III. He was a worshipper of the throne, of the four gilded boards covered with velvet; it mattered little to him who the man was that sat upon it. With his enormous stomach, his ox-like countenance, his elephantine manner, he boasted a delightful rascality; he would sell himself majestically and commit the greatest infamies in the name of duty and conscience. But this man surprised one still more by his vices. Stories were told of him which could only be whispered from ear to ear. His seventy-eight years flourished amidst the most monstrous debauchery. On two occasions it had been necessary to hush up some filthy adventures so that his embroidered senator's coat should not be dragged through the dock of the assize court.