the long, straight, 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 vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of
grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical
hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning
rock--"if you think this spot 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 established 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," said 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 an 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 this noise of blood in his ears passed off at once.
Involuntarily he murmure