not exist with any special distinctness for General D'Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a ridge from which he could see both houses, General D'Hubert became aware of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal decoration of the inflamed sky cast a gentle glow on the sober tints of the southern land. The gray rocks, the brown fields, the purple undulating distances harmonised in luminous accord, exhaled already the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon of white dust. General D'Hubert made out the long, straight-cut military capotes, buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked hats, the lean carven brown countenances—old soldiers—vieilles moustaches! The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye; the other's hard, dry countenance presented some bizarre disquieting peculiarity which, on nearer approach, proved to be the absence of the tip of the nose. Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the slightly lame civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the house where the General Baron D'Hubert lived and what was the best way to get speech with him quietly.
"If you think this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round at the ripening vine-fields framed in purple lines and dominated by the nest of gray and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a steep, conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning rock—"if you think this quiet enough you can speak to him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly with perfect confidence."
They stepped back at this and raised again their hands to their hats with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose, speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough and to be arranged discreetly. Their general quarters were in that village over there where the infernal clodhoppers—damn their false royalist hearts—looked remarkably cross-eyed at three unassuming military men. For the present he should only ask for the name of General D'Hubert's friends.
"What friends?" said the astonished General D'Hubert, completely off the track. "I am staying with my brother-in-law over there."
"Well, he will do for one," suggested the chipped veteran.
"We're the friends of General Feraud," interjected the other, who had kept silent till then, only glowering with his one eye at the man who had never loved the emperor. That was something to look at. For even the gold-laced Judases who had sold him to the English, the marshals and princes, had loved him at some time or other. But this man had never loved the emperor. General Feraud had said so distinctly.
General D'Hubert felt a sort of inward blow in his chest. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second it was as if the spinning of the earth had become perceptible with an awful, slight rustle in the eternal stillness of space. But that was the noise of the blood in his ears and passed off at once. Involuntarily he murmured:
"Feraud! I had forgotten his existence."
"He's existing at present, very uncomfortably it is true, in the infamous inn of that nest of savages up there," said the one-eyed cuirassier drily. "We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses. He's awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know. The general has broken the ministerial order of sojourn to obtain from you the satisfaction he's entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he's anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets the scent."
The other elucidated the idea a little further.
"Get back on the quiet—you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too. Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at the first chance. It's a risk. But honour before everything."
General D'Hubert had recovered his power of speech.
"So you come like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with that—that..." A laughing sort of rage took possession of him.
"Ha! ha! ha! ha!"
His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint while they stood before him lank and straight, as unexpected as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trapdoor in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own narrow shadows falling so black across the white road—the military and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests. They had the outlandish appearance of two imperturbable bronzes of the religion of the sword. And General D'Hubert, also one of the ex-masters of Europe, laughed at these serious phantoms standing in his way.
Said one, indicating the laughing general with a jerk of the head:
"A merry companion that."
"There are some of us that haven't smiled from the day the Other went away," said his comrade.
A violent impulse to set upon and beat these unsubstantial wraiths to the ground frightened General D'Hubert. He ceased laughing suddenly. His urgent desire now was to get rid of them, to get them away from his sight quickly before he lost control of himself. He wondered at this fury he felt rising in his breast. But he had no time to look into that peculiarity just then.
"I understand your wish to be done with me as quickly as possible. Then why waste time in empty ceremonies. Do you see that wood there at the foot of that slope? Yes, the wood of pines. Let us meet there to-morrow at sunrise. I will bring with me my sword or my pistols or both if you like."
The seconds of General Feraud looked at each other.
"Pistols, general," said the cuirassier.
"So be it. Au revoir—to-morrow morning. Till then let me advise you to keep close if you don't want the gendarmerie making inquiries about you before dark. Strangers are rare in this part of the country."
They saluted in silence. General D'Hubert, turning his back on their retreating figures, stood still in the middle of the road for a long time, biting his lower lip and looking on the ground. Then he began to walk straight before him, thus retracing his steps till he found himself before the park gate of his intended's home. Motionless he stared through the bars at the front of the house gleaming clear beyond the thickets and trees. Footsteps were heard on the gravel, and presently a tall stooping shape emerged from the lateral alley following the inner side of the park wall.
Le Chevalier de Valmassigue, uncle of the adorable Adèle, ex-brigadier in the army of the princes, bookbinder in Altona, afterwards shoemaker (with a great reputation for elegance in the fit of ladies' shoes) in another small German town, wore silk stockings on his lean shanks, low shoes with silver buckles, a brocaded waistcoat. A long-skirted coat à la Française covered loosely his bowed back. A small three-cornered hat rested on a lot of powdered hair tied behind in a queue.
"Monsieur le Chevalier," called General D'Hubert softly.
"What? You again here, mon ami? Have you forgotten something?"
"By heavens! That's just it. I have forgotten something. I am come to tell you of it. No—outside. Behind this wall. It's too ghastly a thing to be let in at all where she lives."
The Chevalier came out at once with that benevolent resignation some old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him unduly violent, lacking fineness
