"We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses.
He's awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know.
The General has broken the ministerial order to obtain from you the
satisfaction he's entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he's
anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets on his scent."
The other elucidated the idea a little further. "Get back on the
quiet--you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too.
Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at
the first chance. It's a risk. But honour before everything."
General D'Hubert had recovered his powers of speech. "So you come here
like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with
that--that . . ." A laughing sort of rage took possession of him. "Ha!
ha! ha! ha!"
His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood
before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a
snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago
the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts,
they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own
narrow shadows falling so black across the white road: the military
and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests.
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