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 vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of
grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical
hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning
rock--"if you think this spot 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 established in
that village over there, where the infernal clodhoppers--damn their
false, Royalist hearts!--looked remarkably cross-eyed at three
unassuming military men.
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