Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the
slightly lame civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the
house where the General Baron D'Hubert lived and what was the best way
to get speech with him quietly.
"If you think this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round
at the ripening vine-fields framed in purple lines and dominated by the
nest of gray and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a
steep, conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape
of a crowning rock--"if you think this quiet enough you can speak to
him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly with perfect
confidence."
They stepped back at this and raised again their hands to their hats
with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose,
speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough and
to be arranged discreetly. 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."
"Well, he will do for one," suggested the chipped veteran.
"We're the friends of General Feraud," interjected the other, who had
kept silent till then, only glowering with his one eye at the man who
had never loved the emperor.
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