It was objected to him that the men
themselves were too young for such a theory to fit their proceedings.
They belonged also to different and distant parts of France. A
subcommissary of the Intendence, an agreeable and cultivated bachelor
in keysermere breeches, Hessian boots and a blue coat embroidered with
silver lace, who affected to believe in the transmigration of souls,
suggested that the two had met perhaps in some previous existence.
The feud was in the forgotten past. It might have been something quite
inconceivable in the present state of their being; but their souls
remembered the animosity and manifested an instinctive antagonism. He
developed his theme jocularly. Yet the affair was so absurd from the
worldly, the military, the honourable, or the prudential point of view,
that this weird explanation seemed rather more reasonable than any
other.
The two officers had confided nothing definite to any one. Resentment,
humiliation at having been worsted arms in hand, and an uneasy feeling
of having been involved into a scrape by the injustice of fate, kept
Lieutenant Feraud savagely dumb. He mistrusted the sympathy of mankind.
That would of course go to that dandified staff officer. Lying in bed he
raved to himself in his mind or aloud to the pretty maid who ministered
to his needs with devotion and listened to his horrible imprecations
with alarm. That Lieutenant D'Hubert should be made to "pay for it,"
whatever it was, seemed to her just and natural.
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