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"I cannot consider General D'Hubert's existence of any account either for the glory or safety of France," he snapped viciously. "You don't pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do I who have met him half a dozen times on the ground do you?" His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced. Colonel Feraud walked up and down the room. "This is not the time to mince matters," he said.
Lieutenant D'Hubert's natural kindness of disposition and strong sense of comradeship helped his powers of observation, which generally were not remarkable. He changed his tone to a most insinuating softness; and gazing at the hussar's breeches hanging over the arm of the girl, he appealed to the interest she took in Lieutenant Feraud's comfort and happiness. He was pressing and persuasive.
A conviction that Feraud would presently do something rash was like balm to General D'Hubert's soul. But to keep his chin raised off the ground was irksome, and not much use either. He peeped round, exposing a fraction of his head with dread, but really with little risk. His enemy, as a matter of fact, did not expect to see anything of him so far down as that.
Their general quarters were 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."
He left the country of mantillas and oranges without regret. The first signs of a not unbecoming baldness added to the lofty aspect of Colonel D'Hubert's forehead. This feature was no longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles.
The unfavourable opinion entertained of him in Bonapartist circles, though it rested on nothing more solid than the unsupported pronouncement of General Feraud, was directly responsible for General D'Hubert's retention on the active list. As to General Feraud, his rank was confirmed, too.
Like a man just waking from a deep sleep he stared with a drowsy expression at the evening sky. Lieutenant D'Hubert's urgent shouts to the old gardener produced no effect not so much as to make him shut his toothless mouth. Then he remembered that the man was stone deaf.
Whether meant so or not, they found their way in less than four-and-twenty hours into Lieut. D'Hubert's bedroom. In consequence Lieut. D'Hubert, sitting propped up with pillows, received the overtures made to him next day by the statement that the affair was of a nature which could not bear discussion.
He began to enjoy the state of general wonder, and was pleased to add to it by assuming an attitude of fierce discretion. The colonel of Lieut. D'Hubert's regiment was a grey-haired, weather-beaten warrior, who took a simple view of his responsibilities. "I can't," he said to himself, "let the best of my subalterns get damaged like this for nothing.
But Colonel D'Hubert's letter contained also some philosophical generalities upon the uncertainty of all personal hopes if bound up entirely with the prestigious fortune of one incomparably great, it is true, yet still remaining but a man in his greatness. This sentiment would have appeared rank heresy to Colonel Feraud.
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