ing drilled in front of the hotel. The bells
were chiming and clanging; high up into the blue air soared the tall
pinnacles of the Cathedral, delicate stone lacework still fresh and
young at five hundred years old, spared by the storm which twenty years
ago had wrecked so much down below that was beautiful. A crowd of
blue-grey pigeons flapped and cooed about the towers or strutted softly
on the stones in the square.

Monsieur Urbain put up his horses at an old posting hotel in the street
near the gateway, and walked up into the square. Finding that General
Ratoneau was at home, he left Monsieur de Sainfoy's letter with his own
card, and a message that he would have the honour of calling to see the
General, later in the afternoon. He then went away to do his
commissions. At the appointed time he returned to the hotel, and was at
once shown upstairs to a large room at the back, looking on a broad,
paved court surrounded by barracks.

Neither the room nor its inmate was attractive, and Urbain's humorous
face screwed itself into a grimace of disgust as he walked in; but he
did not, for that, renounce the errand with which Madame de Sainfoy had
entrusted him. The floor was dusty and strewn with papers, the walls
were stained, the furniture, handsome in itself, had been much ill-used,
and two or three chairs now lay flung where it was tolerably evident
that the General had kicked them. The western sun poured hotly in; the
atmosphere was of wine, tobacco, and boots; dirty packs of cards were
scattered on the table among bottles and glasses, pipes and cigars.
General Ratoneau lay stretched on a large sofa in undress uniform, with
a red face and a cigar in his mouth. Herve de Sainfoy's letter, torn
across, lay on the floor beside him.

He got up and received his visitor with formal civility, though his
looks said plainly, "What the devil do you want here?"

Urbain was cool and self-possessed. He acted the _role_ of an ordinary
visitor, talking of the country and the news from Spain. The General,
though extremely grumpy, was still capable of ordinary conversation, and
his remarks, especially on the Spanish campaign, were those of an
intelligent soldier who knew his subject.

"If the Emperor would send me to Spain," he growled, "I would teach
those miserable Spaniards a lesson. As to the English, it is the desire
of my life to fight them. They are bull-dogs, they say--sapristi, I am
something of a bull-dog myself--when I lay