"I shall await your orders, madame, to know whether I am to report our
proceedings to you, or if you will come to my office to agree to the
terms of a compromise," said Derville, taking leave.



A week after Derville had paid these two visits, on a fine morning in
June, the husband and wife, who had been separated by an almost
supernatural chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet
in the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies
liberally advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to
dress as suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a
very decent cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue
cloth with white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red
ribbon of the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the
habits of wealth he had recovered his soldierly style. He held himself
up; his face, grave and mysterious-looking, reflected his happiness
and all his hopes, and seemed to have acquired youth and /impasto/, to
borrow a picturesque word from the painter's art. He was no more like
the Chabert of the old box-coat than a cartwheel double sou is like a
newly coined forty-franc piece. The passer-by, only to see him, would
have recognized at once one of the noble wrecks of our old army, one
of the heroic men on whom our national glory is reflected, as a
splinter of ice on which the sun shines seems to reflect every beam.
These veterans are at once a picture and a book.

When the Count jumped out of his carriage to go into Derville's
office, he did it as lightly as a young man. Hardly had his cab moved
off, when a smart brougham drove up, splendid with coats-of-arms.
Madame la Comtesse Ferraud stepped out in a dress which, though