ither of them replied, but all three looked at
him with a sort of bright stupidity, if I may combine those two words.
Derville repeated his questions, but without success. Provoked by the
saucy cunning of these three imps, he abused them with the sort of
pleasantry which young men think they have the right to address to
little boys, and they broke the silence with a horse-laugh. Then
Derville was angry.

The Colonel, hearing him, now came out of the little low room, close to
the dairy, and stood on the threshold of his doorway with indescribable
military coolness. He had in his mouth a very finely-colored pipe--a
technical phrase to a smoker--a humble, short clay pipe of the kind
called "_brule-queule_." He lifted the peak of a dreadfully greasy
cloth cap, saw Derville, and came straight across the midden to join his
benefactor the sooner, calling out in friendly tones to the boys:

"Silence in the ranks!"

The children at once kept a respectful silence, which showed the power
the old soldier had over them.

"Why did you not write to me?" he said to Derville. "Go along by the
cowhouse! There--the path is paved there," he exclaimed, seeing the
lawyer's hesitancy, for he did not wish to wet his feet in the manure
heap.

Jumping from one dry spot to another, Derville reached the door by which
the Colonel had come out. Chabert seemed but ill pleased at having to
receive him in the bed-room he occupied; and, in fact, Derville found
but one chair there. The Colonel's bed consisted of some trusses of
straw, over which his hostess had spread two or three of those old
fragments of carpet, picked up heaven knows where, which milk-women
use to cover the seats of their carts. The floor was simply the trodden
earth. The walls, sweating salt-petre, green with mould, and full of
cracks, were so excessively damp that on the side where the Colonel's
bed was a reed mat had been nailed. The famous box-coat hung on a nail.
Two pairs of old boots lay in a corner. There was not a sign of linen.
On the worm-eaten table the _Bulletins de la Grande Armee_, reprinted
by Plancher, lay open, and seemed to be the Colonel's reading; his
countenance was calm and serene in the midst of this squalor. His visit
to Derville seemed to have altered his features; the lawyer perceived in
them traces of a happy feeling, a particular gleam set there by hope.

"Does the smell of the pipe annoy you?" he said, placing the dilapidated
straw-bottomed chair f