“That’s more than I can say, my dear sir; I left him sitting on his stool.  It was midday, the battle was drawing nearer, and it occurred to me that it was time to be thinking of my own return.  All that I can tell you besides is that a general to whom I pointed out the position of Carignan in the distance, in the plain to our rear, appeared greatly surprised to learn that the Belgian frontier lay in that direction and was only a few miles away.  Ah, that the poor Emperor should have to rely on such servants!”

Gilberte, all smiles, was giving her attention to the captain and keeping him supplied with buttered toast, as much at ease as she had ever been in bygone days when she received him in her salon during her widowhood.  She insisted that he should accept a bed with them, but he declined, and it was agreed that he should rest for an hour or two on a sofa in Delaherche’s study before going out to find his regiment.  As he was taking the sugar bowl from the young woman’s hands old Madame Delaherche, who had kept her eye on them, distinctly saw him squeeze her fingers, and the old lady’s suspicions were confirmed.  At that moment a servant came to the door.

“Monsieur, there is a soldier outside who wants to know the address of Monsieur Weiss.”

There was nothing “stuck-up” about Delaherche, people said; he was fond of popularity and was always delighted to have a chat with those of an inferior station.

“He wants Weiss’s address! that’s odd.  Bring the soldier in here.”

Jean entered the room in such an exhausted state that he reeled as if he had been drunk.  He started at seeing his captain seated at the table with two ladies, and involuntarily withdrew the hand that he had extended toward a chair in order to steady himself; he replied briefly to the questions of the manufacturer, who played his part of the soldier’s friend with great cordiality.  In a few words he explained his relation toward Maurice and the reason why he was looking for him.

“He is a corporal in my company,” the captain finally said by way of cutting short the conversation, and inaugurated a series of questions on his own account to learn what had become of the regiment.  As Jean went on to tell that the colonel had been seen crossing the city to reach his camp at the head of what few men were left him, Gilberte again thoughtlessly spoke up, with the vivacity of a woman whose beauty is supposed to atone for her indiscretion: 

“Oh! he is my uncle; why does he not come and breakfast with us?  We could fix up a room for him here.  Can’t we send someone for him?”

But the old lady discouraged the project with an authority there was no disputing.  The good old bourgeois blood of the frontier towns flowed in her veins; her austerely patriotic sentiments were almost those of a man.  She broke the stern silence that she had preserved during the meal by saying: 

“Never mind Monsieur de Vineuil; he is doing his duty.”