Speech was altogether out of the question; I believe if he had had only fifty yards more to run he would have fallen dead on his arrival, like the Greek of Marathon. Finally, he got his breath again.
"You do not know me," he said, "but I, I know you: you are M. Alexandre Dumas, who saved me from the galleys!"
Whereupon he fell on his knees and thanked me in the name of his wife and children.
I jumped down, took him in my arms and embraced him. After a few moments he calmed down.
"Ah! monsieur," he said, "what recklessness! and what good luck that I was set at liberty in time!"
"What do you mean?"
"Whoever advised you to travel in la Vendée in such a uniform as that?"
"Nobody.... I acted according to my own wishes."
"But it is a miracle you have not been killed before this!"
"Ah, indeed! then are your Angevins as bad as that?"