“A fig for your chance!  Women are the mischief that casts us adrift to chance.”

“Monsieur, we cast ourselves sometimes.”

“Dieu de Dieu!  I doubt that.  We should go straight enough if it were not for them.”

The Chasseur smiled again.

“M. le Viscomte thinks we are sure to be right, then, if, for the key to every black story, we ask, ‘Who was she?’”

“Of course I do.  Well! who was she?  We are all quoting our tempters to-night.  Give us your story, mon brave!”

“Monsieur, you have it in the folios, as well as my sword could write it.”

“Good, good!” muttered the listening General.  The soldier-like answer pleased him, and he looked attentively at the giver of it.

Chanrellon’s brown eyes flashed a bright response.

“And your sword writes in a brave man’s fashion—­writes what France loves to read.  But before you wore your sword here?  Tell us of that.  It was a romance—­wasn’t it?”

“If it were, I have folded down the page, monsieur.”

“Open it then!  Come—­what brought you out among us?  Out with it!”

“Monsieur, direct obedience is a soldier’s duty; but I never heard that inquisitive annoyance was an officer’s privilege.”

These words were calm, cold, a little languid, and a little haughty.  The manner of old habit, the instinct of buried pride spoke in them, and disregarded the barrier between a private of Chasseurs who was but a sous-officier, and a Colonel Commandant who was also a noble of France.

Involuntarily, all the men sitting round the little table, outside the cafe, turned and looked at him.  The boldness of speech and the quietude of tone drew all their eyes in curiosity upon him.

Chanrellon flushed scarlet over his frank brow, and an instant’s passion gleamed out of his eyes; the next he threw his three chairs down with a crash, as he shook his mighty frame like an Alpine dog, and bowed with a French grace, with a campaigner’s frankness.

“A right rebuke!—­fairly given, and well deserved.  I thank you for the lesson.”

The Chasseur looked surprised and moved; in truth, he was more touched than he showed.  Under the rule of Chateauroy, consideration and courtesy had been things long unshown to him.  Involuntarily, forgetful of rank, he stretched his hand out, on the impulse of soldier to soldier, of gentleman to gentleman.  Then, as the bitter remembrance of the difference in rank and station between them flashed on his memory, he was raising it proudly, deferentially, in the salute of a subordinate to his superior, when Chanrellon’s grasp closed on it readily.  The victim of Coeur d’Acier was of as gallant a temper as ever blent the reckless condottiere with the thoroughbred noble.

The Chasseur colored slightly, as he remembered that he had forgotten alike his own position and their relative stations.

“I beg your pardon, M. le Viscomte,” he said simply, as he gave the salute with ceremonious grace, and passed onward rapidly, as though he wished to forget and to have forgotten the momentary self-oblivion of which he had been guilty.