I cast my eyes down to my bare hands, and I went purple. I mechanically thrust my hands into my pockets.
Alas! I had no gloves.
I stepped back and threw a wild glance round me.
Four steps from me stood a young man, named Fourcade, who had been sent from Paris to start and direct a Lancastrian school at Villers-Cotterets; he was busily engaged trying with difficulty to get into a pair of beautiful new gloves, which he had evidently purchased only a quarter of an hour previously.
Fourcade was a delightful young fellow who, in spite of the difference in age between us, had taken a fancy to me. He belonged as much to the century that had just ended as to the one we had entered upon; so he too, like myself, wore nankeen trousers and a pale blue coat.
Such a bond of similarity between us would alone have given me confidence in Fourcade, if this confidence had not already existed.
"My dear friend," I said, "will you do me an immense service?"
"What is it?"
"Give me your gloves."
"My gloves?"