'You have come to a very wise decision,' said he when I had answered his
question. 'But you have always been of this way of thinking, have you
not? Is it not true that you once defended me when some young
Englishman was drinking toasts to my downfall at an inn in this village
in which you lived?'

I remembered the incident, although I could not imagine how it had
reached his ears.

'Why should you have done this?'

'I did it on impulse, Sire.'

'On impulse!' he cried, in a tone of contempt. 'I do not know what
people mean when they say that they do things upon impulse.
In Charenton things are doubtless done upon impulse, but not amongst
sane people. Why should you risk your life over there in defending me
when at the time you had nothing to hope for from me?'

'It was because I felt that you stood for France, Sire.'

During this conversation he had still walked up and down the room,
twisting his right arm about, and occasionally looking at one or other
of us with his eyeglass, for his sight was so weak that he always needed
a single glass indoors and binoculars outside. Sometimes he stopped and
helped himself to great pinches of snuff from a tortoise-shell box, but
I observed that none of it ever reached his nose, for he dropped it all
from between his fingers on to his waistcoat and the floor. My answer
seemed to please him, for he suddenly seized my ear and pulled it with
considerable violence.