soldier was thirty, and seemed forty at the least. Both wore the red
rosette of the officers of the Legion of honor. A few spare locks of
black hair mixed with white, like the wing of a magpie, escaped from
the colonel's cap, while handsome brown curls adorned the brow of the
statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of his
pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The other
had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of an
epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters of
tanned leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets they had just
come through.

"Come," said Monsieur de Sucy, "let us get on. A short hour's march,
and we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner."

"It is easy to see you have never loved," replied the councillor, with
a look that was pitifully comic; "you are as relentless as article 304
of the penal code."

Philippe de Sucy quivered; his broad brow contracted; his face became
as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness
distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all
strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart;
thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that there
was something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language cannot
render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not
comprehend them. Monsieur d'Albon had one of those delicate natures
which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to the emotion
they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend's silence,
rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have
touched a wound that was evidently not healed.