Motionless he stared through the bars at the front of the house, gleaming clear beyond the thickets and trees. Footsteps scrunched on the gravel, and presently a tall stooping shape emerged from the lateral alley following the inner side of the park wall.
Le Chevalier de Valmassigue, uncle of the adorable Adele, ex-brigadier in the army of the Princes, book-binder in Altona, afterwards shoemaker (with a great reputation for elegance in the fit of ladies’ shoes) in another small German town, wore silk stockings on his lean shanks, low shoes with silver buckles, a brocaded waistcoat. A long- skirted coat, a la francaise, covered loosely his thin, bowed back. A small three-cornered hat rested on a lot of powdered hair, tied in a queue.
“Monsieur le Chevalier,” called General D’Hubert, softly.
“What? You here again, mon ami? Have you forgotten something?”
“By heavens! that’s just it. I have forgotten something. I am come to tell you of it. No — outside. Behind this wall. It’s too ghastly a thing to be let in at all where she lives.”
The Chevalier came out at once with that benevolent resignation some old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a century than General D’Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him unduly violent, lacking fineness and measure, their language needlessly exaggerated. He joined calmly the General on the road, and they made a few steps in silence, the General trying to master his agitation, and get proper control of his voice.
“It is perfectly true; I forgot something. I forgot till half an hour ago that I had an urgent affair of honour on my hands. It’s incredible, but it is so!”
All was still for a moment. Then in the profound evening silence of the countryside the clear, aged voice of the Chevalier was heard trembling slightly: “Monsieur! That’s an indignity.”
It was his first thought. The girl born during his exile, the posthumous daughter of his poor brother murdered by a band of Jacobins, had grown since his return very dear to his old heart, which had been starving on mere memories of affection for so many years. “It is an inconceivable thing, I say! A man settles such affairs before he thinks of asking for a young girl’s hand. Why! If you had forgotten for ten days longer, you would have been married before your memory returned to you. In my time men did not forget such things — nor yet what is due to the feelings of an innocent young woman. If I did not respect them myself, I would qualify your conduct in a way which you would not like.”
General D’Hubert relieved himself frankly by a groan. “Don’t let that consideration prevent you. You run no risk of offending her mortally.”
But the old man paid no attention to this lover’s nonsense. It’s doubtful whether he even heard. “What is it? “he asked. “What’s the nature of … ?” “Call it a youthful folly, Monsieur le Chevalier. An inconceivable, incredible result of …” He stopped short. “He will never believe the story,” he thought. “He will only think I am taking him for a fool, and get offended.” General D’Hubert spoke up again: “Yes, originating in youthful folly, it has become …”
The Chevalier interrupted: “Well, then it must be arranged.”
“Arranged?”
“Yes, no matter at what cost to your amour propre. You should have remembered you were engaged. You forgot that, too, I suppose. And then you go and forget your quarrel. It’s the most hopeless exhibition of levity I ever heard of.”
“Good heavens, Monsieur! You don’t imagine I have been picking up this quarrel last time I was in Paris, or anything of the sort, do you?”
“Eh! What matters the precise date of your insane conduct,” exclaimed the Chevalier, testily. “The principal thing is to arrange it.”
Noticing General D’Hubert getting restive and try-ing to place a word, the old emigre raised his hand, and added with dignity, “I’ve been a soldier, too. I would never dare suggest a doubtful step to the man whose name my niece is to bear. I tell you that entre galants hommes an affair can always be arranged.”
“But saperiotte, Monsieur le Chevalier, it’s fifteen or sixteen years ago. I was a lieutenant of hussars then.”
The old Chevalier seemed confounded by the vehe-mently despairing tone of this information. “You were a lieutenant of hussars sixteen years ago,” he mumbled in a dazed manner.
“Why, yes! You did not suppose I was made a general in my cradle like a royal prince.”
In the deepening purple twilight of the fields spread with vine leaves, backed by a low band of sombre crimson in the west, the voice of the old ex-officer in the army of the Princes sounded collected, punctiliously civil.
“Do I dream? Is this a pleasantry? Or am I to understand that you have been hatching an affair of honour for sixteen years?”
“It has clung to me for that length of time. That is my precise meaning. The quarrel itself is not to be explained easily. We met on the ground several times during that time, of course.”
“What manners! What horrible perversion of manliness! Nothing can account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution which has tainted a whole generation,” mused the returned emigre in a low tone. “Who’s your adversary?” he asked a little louder.
“My adversary? His name is Feraud.”
Shadowy in his tricorne and old-fashioned clothes, like a bowed, thin ghost of the ancien regime, the Chevalier voiced a ghostly memory. “I can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval, between Monsieur de Brissac, Captain in the Bodyguards, and d’Anjorrant (not the pock-marked one, the other — the Beau d’Anjorrant, as they called him). They met three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner. It was the fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing …”
“This is nothing of the kind,” interrupted General D’Hubert. He laughed a little sardonically. “Not at all so simple,” he added. “Nor yet half so reasonable,” he finished, inaudibly, between his teeth, and ground them with rage.
