“Monsieur le Chevalier!  To what do you think you have returned from your emigration?”

This was said in such a startling tone that the old man raised sharply his bowed head, glimmering silvery white under the points of the little tricorne.  For a time he made no sound.

“God knows!” he said at last, pointing with a slow and grave gesture at a tall roadside cross mounted on a block of stone, and stretching its arms of forged iron all black against the darkening red band in the sky—­“God knows!  If it were not for this emblem, which I remember seeing on this spot as a child, I would wonder to what we who remained faithful to God and our king have returned.  The very voices of the people have changed.”

“Yes, it is a changed France,” said General D’Hubert.  He seemed to have regained his calm.  His tone was slightly ironic.  “Therefore I cannot take your advice.  Besides, how is one to refuse to be bitten by a dog that means to bite?  It’s impracticable.  Take my word for it—­Feraud isn’t a man to be stayed by apologies or refusals.  But there are other ways.  I could, for instance, send a messenger with a word to the brigadier of the gendarmerie in Senlac.  He and his two friends are liable to arrest on my simple order.  It would make some talk in the army, both the organized and the disbanded—­especially the disbanded.  All canaille!  All once upon a time the companions in arms of Armand D’Hubert.  But what need a D’Hubert care what people that don’t exist may think?  Or, better still, I might get my brother-in-law to send for the mayor of the village and give him a hint.  No more would be needed to get the three ‘brigands’ set upon with flails and pitchforks and hunted into some nice, deep, wet ditch—­and nobody the wiser!  It has been done only ten miles from here to three poor devils of the disbanded Red Lancers of the Guard going to their homes.  What says your conscience, Chevalier?  Can a D’Hubert do that thing to three men who do not exist?”

A few stars had come out on the blue obscurity, clear as crystal, of the sky.  The dry, thin voice of the Chevalier spoke harshly:  “Why are you telling me all this?”

The General seized the withered old hand with a strong grip.  “Because I owe you my fullest confidence.  Who could tell Adele but you?  You understand why I dare not trust my brother-in-law nor yet my own sister.  Chevalier!  I have been so near doing these things that I tremble yet.  You don’t know how terrible this duel appears to me.  And there’s no escape from it.”

He murmured after a pause, “It’s a fatality,” dropped the Chevalier’s passive hand, and said in his ordinary conversational voice, “I shall have to go without seconds.  If it is my lot to remain on the ground, you at least will know all that can be made known of this affair.”

The shadowy ghost of the ancien regime seemed to have become more bowed during the conversation.  “How am I to keep an indifferent face this evening before these two women?” he groaned.  “General!  I find it very difficult to forgive you.”