the Colonel's bed was a reed mat had been nailed. The famous box-coat
hung on a nail. Two pairs of old boots lay in a corner. There was not
a sign of linen. On the worm-eaten table the /Bulletins de la Grande
Armee/, reprinted by Plancher, lay open, and seemed to be the
Colonel's reading; his countenance was calm and serene in the midst of
this squalor. His visit to Derville seemed to have altered his
features; the lawyer perceived in them traces of a happy feeling, a
particular gleam set there by hope.

"Does the smell of the pipe annoy you?" he said, placing the
dilapidated straw-bottomed chair for his lawyer.

"But, Colonel, you are dreadfully uncomfortable here!"

The speech was wrung from Derville by the distrust natural to lawyers,
and the deplorable experience which they derive early in life from the
appalling and obscure tragedies at which they look on.

"Here," said he to himself, "is a man who has of course spent my money
in satisfying a trooper's three theological virtues--play, wine, and
women!"

"To be sure, monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury here. It is
a camp lodging, tempered by friendship, but----" And the soldier shot
a deep glance at the man of law--"I have done no one wrong, I have
never turned my back on anybody, and I sleep in peace."

Derville reflected that there would be some want of delicacy in asking
his client to account for the sums of money he had advanced, so he
merely said: