"Charles!" they both cried at once, embracing him and pressing him to their hearts. "Our wives and our children shall know your name to love and bless it."
While Charles was replying as best he could to this effusion, a young man entered, and, in excellent Latin, asked Pichegru whether he could grant him an interview of a quarter of an hour.
Pichegru, much astonished by this greeting, replied in the same language that he was at his disposal.
Opening the door of a smaller room, he signed to the stranger to enter it, and followed him: then, thinking that the man had something confidential to confide to him, he closed the door behind him.
[CHAPTER XIX]
THE SPY
Pichegru threw a rapid and questioning glance at the new-comer; but sharp and piercing as it was, it failed to tell him to what nationality he belonged. His appearance was that of a man who has come a long distance, and has walked much of the way. He wore a fox-skin cap and a blouse made of goat-skin, secured at the waist by a leather belt; the sleeves of a striped woollen vest showed through the openings at the upper part of this blouse, of which the hairy side was turned in; and his long boots, of which the soles were in a bad state, came up to his knees.
There was no hint of his nationality in all this. But his fair hair, his clear blue eye, firm even to fierceness, his flaxen mustache, his determined chin and broad jaws, convinced Pichegru that he belonged to one of the northern races.