am eager to return here."

Patience walked in front of me with an impassive air. When we arrived
at his little dwelling, we found my poor sergeant, who had just arrived
likewise. Not finding any horse on which he could follow me, and not
wishing to quit me, he had come on foot, and so quickly that he was
bathed in perspiration. Nevertheless, the moment he saw us he sprang
up full of life from the bench on which he had thrown himself under the
bower of vine-branches, and came to meet us.

"Patience!" he cried, in a dramatic style which would have made me smile
had it been possible for me to display a glimmer of mirth at such a
moment. "Old fool! . . . Slanderer at your age? . . . Fie, sir! . . .
Ruined by good fortune . . . you are . . . yes."

Patience, impassive as ever, shrugged his shoulders and said to his
friend:

"Marcasse, you do not know what you are saying. Go and rest awhile at
the bottom of the orchard. This matter does not concern you. I want to
speak to your master alone. I wish you to go," he added, taking him by
the arm; and there was a touch of authority in his manner to which the
sergeant, in spite of his ticklish prided, yielded from instinct and
habit.

As soon as we were alone Patience proceeded to the point; he began by a
series of questions to which I resolved to submit, so that I might the
more quickly obtain some light on the state of affairs around me.

"Will you kindly inform me, monsieur," he said, "what you purpose doing