lly could not say what sort of breakfast they were
likely to find. Plenty, he hoped--for his nephew had come in from a long
morning's sport, half-an-hour ago, and the cook knew how to a measure a
young man's appetite. But as to quality--he could only throw himself on
the kind indulgence of his friends.

"As for me," said the General, "I am as hungry as a wolf, and I could
eat a lump of brown bread, and wash it down with a quart of sour wine."

"Ah, ah! a true soldier, monsieur!" said Monsieur Joseph, and clapped
his hands gently.

"My uncle's wine is not sour, as Monsieur le General will find," said
Angelot.

The General replied, with a scowl and a shrug, "I don't suppose you mean
to compare your wine from this poor soil with the wine of the South, for
instance."

"Ah, pardon, but I do!" cried the boy. "This very morning, our farmer on
the _landes_ gave me a glass of wine, white sparkling wine, which you
would hardly match in France, except, of course, in the real champagne
country. And even as to that, our wine is purer. It tastes of sunshine
and of the white grapes of the vineyard. There is nothing better."

"Nothing better for children, I dare say," said General Ratoneau, with
a laugh. "Men like something stronger than sunshine and grapes. So will
you, one of these days."

Angelot looked hard at the man for a moment. He sat squarely, twisting
his whip in his hands, on one of Monsieur Joseph's old Louis Quinze
chairs, which seemed hardly fit to bear his weight. The delicate
atmosphere of old France was all about him. Angelot and his uncle were
incarnations of it, even in their plain shooting clothes; and the
Prefect, the Baron de Mauves, was worthy in looks and manners of the old
regime from which he sprang. The other man was a son of the Revolution
and of a butcher at Marseilles. With his glittering uniform, his look of
a coarse Roman, he was the very type of military tyranny at its worst,
without even the good manners of past days to soften the frank insolence
of a soldier.

"Voila l'Empire! I wish my father could see him!" Angelot thought.

Monsieur Joseph looked at his nephew. His sweet smile had faded, a
sudden shadow of anxiety taking its place. How would Angelot bear with
this man? Would he remember that in spite of all provocation he must be
treated civilly? The Prefect also glanced up a little nervously at
Angelot as he stood. Had the handsome, attractive boy any share at all
of his father's wisdom