“No!” I said bluntly, and nerved myself for what might follow.
Then I began to suspect that this dragon, like that of Rouen, was ferocious only in appearance, for he contented himself with gnawing at his mustache and looking at me darkly.
“How am I to know you are not a ci-devant?” he rasped out at last. “A traitor, a conspirator against the Nation, a scoundrel upon whose head a price has been set?”
“Merely by looking at me, my friend,” I retorted, and smiled at the thought that I, whose whole life had passed peacefully at Beaufort, could be any of those things.
I cannot say that he actually smiled in answer, but his face certainly relaxed.
“When did you leave Beaufort?” he questioned, in a milder tone.
“Yesterday morning.”
“And last night?”
“I spent at Tours.”
“What inn?”