“When?”
“Oh, you need not hurry, providing you start to-morrow.”
“Excellent; sooner if you wish. Tell me what I am to do there.”
“Something of the utmost importance, Roland.”
“The devil! It isn’t a diplomatic mission, I presume?”
“Yes; it is a diplomatic mission for which I need a man who is not a diplomatist.”
“Then I’m your man, general! Only, you understand, the less a diplomatist I am, the more precise my instructions must be.”
“I am going to give them to you. Do you see that map?”
And he showed the young man a large map of Piedmont stretched out on the floor, under a lamp suspended from the ceiling.
“Yes, I see it,” replied Roland, accustomed to follow the general along the unexpected dashes of his genius; “but it is a map of Piedmont.”