"I say: Good-morning, comrade!" replied he, smiling agreeably.

"And to whom are you speaking, if you please?"

"I am speaking to you, yourself, my comrade, and I say to you,
good-morning, comrade! good-morning."

Gilbert looked at him attentively, trying to find some explanation
of this strange prank, and this excessive and astounding insolence.

"And will you tell me," he continued, after a few moments' silence,
"will you be good enough to tell me, who gave you permission to
call me comrade?"

"It was . . . it was . . ." answered Fritz, hemming and hawing.
And he reflected a moment, as though trying to remember his lesson,
that he might not stumble in its recital. "Ah!" resumed he, "it
was simply his Excellency the Count, and I cannot conceive what you
see astonishing in it."

"Have you ever heard the Count," demanded Gilbert, who felt the
blood boiling in his veins, "call me your comrade?"

"Ah! certainly!" he answered with a long burst of laughter. "Every
day, when I come from him, M. le Comte says to me: 'Well! how is
your comrade Gilbert?' And isn't it very natural? Don't we eat at
the same rack? Are we not, both of us, in the service of the same
master? And don't you see. . . ."

He was not able to say more, for Gilbert bounded from his chair,