"Ha!"

"Because I have dragged him back when in his drunken love he would have
thrown his arms about your cousin Adele."

"Oh!" The young man's colour had been rising and his brows knitted at
each successive charge, but at this last his anger boiled over, and he
hurried forward with fury in his face, dragging his elderly companion by
the elbow. They had been passing through one of those winding paths,
bordered by high hedges, which thinned away every here and there to give
a glimpse of some prowling faun or weary nymph who slumbered in marble
amid the foliage. The few courtiers who met them gazed with surprise at
so ill-assorted a pair of companions. But the young soldier was too
full of his own plans to waste a thought upon their speculations. Still
hurrying on, he followed a crescent path which led past a dozen stone
dolphins shooting water out of their mouths over a group of Tritons, and
so through an avenue of great trees which looked as if they had grown
there for centuries, and yet had in truth been carried over that very
year by incredible labour from St. Germain and Fontainebleau. Beyond
this point a small gate led out of the grounds, and it was through it
that the two passed, the elder man puffing and panting with this unusual
haste.

"How did you come, uncle?"

"In a caleche."

"Where is it?"

"That is it, beyond the auberge."