"Thank goodness!"
Harel came in whilst I was dressing.
"Good—morning, Harel.... What is the news, my friend?"
"The news is," said Harel, drawing his snuff-box from his pocket and plunging in his finger and thumb up to the first joint, "the news is that I have a cunning idea in my head." He breathed up his pinch of snuff with sensuous enjoyment, and, as is usual with great connoisseurs, scattered three-quarters of his snuff over the floor and into the air. "An excellent idea!" he went on.
"Well, my friend, you shall communicate it to me on my return."
"Where are you going?"
"To Rambouillet, of course!"
"Excellent! That's the finishing stroke! You ran the risk of being shot three days ago at Soissons, and now you want to go and get some limb or other broken at Rambouillet!"
"But don't you realise that Charles X. is marching on Paris with twenty thousand men and fifty pieces of cannon?"
"I know that is the report; but let fools believe such news as that. Poor Charles X.! I will wager, if he marches to any town whatsoever, it will be towards Havre or Cherbourg."