“My feelings, Sir, are as pure as your own!” said Denot.
“If so,” said Father Jerome, “you had better teach us all to think so, by taking care that your conduct is also as pure as M. de Lescure’s.”
“Oh, Father Jerome, do not anger him,” said Henri. “Come with me, Adolphe, and we will quietly talk over this; they don’t exactly understand what you mean yet.”
“But they shall understand what I mean,” said Denot, whose anger was now beyond control, “and they shall know that I will not remain here to be rebuked by a priest, who has thrust himself into affairs with which he has no concern; or to make myself subservient to men who are not fit to be my equals. I will not deign to be a common soldier, when such a man as Stofflet is made an officer.”
And he got up from the chair in which he had again seated himself, and stalked out of the room.
“He has at any rate proved to us,” said Bonchamps, “that I was wrong to nominate him, and that you were right not to accept the nomination.”
“I grieve that he should be vexed with me,” said Stofflet; “but I did not seek to put myself above him.”
“Time and experience will make him wise,” said de Lescure: “let us pity his folly and forgive it.”
The council was then broken up, and the different officers went each to perform his own duties. When Denot left the room, Henri immediately followed him.
“Adolphe,” said he, as he overtook him in the market-place, “Adolphe, indeed you are wrong, no one meant to show you any indignity.”