"Force?" she asked suggestively. The drollery of it set her smiling.

"In a week I shall have five hundred men."

"Dreamer!" she thought, and shook her head dubiously; but, glancing
again at the ivory portrait, her mood changed.

"Au revoir," she said. "Come and tell me about the mockers. Success go
with you--sire."

Yet she did not know whether she thought him sire or sinner, gentleman
or comedian, as she watched him go down the hill with Lagroin and Parpon.
But she had the portrait. How did he get it? No matter, it was hers
now.

Curious to know more of the episode in the village below, she ordered her
carriage, and came driving slowly past the Louis Quinze at an exciting
moment. A crowd had gathered, and boys, and even women, were laughing
and singing in ridicule snatches of, "Vive Napoleon!" For, in derision
of yesterday's event, a small boy, tricked out with a paper cocked-hat
and incongruous regimentals, with a hobby-horse between his legs, was
marching up and down, preceded by another lad, who played a toy drum in
derision of Lagroin. The children had been well rehearsed, for even as
Valmond arrived upon the scene, Lagroin and Parpon on either side of him,
the mock Valmond was bidding the drummer: "Play up the feet of the army!"

The crowd parted on either side, silenced and awed by the look of
potential purpose in the face of this yesterday's hero. The old
sergeant's glance was full of fury, Parpon's of a devilish sort of glee.