"What is there strange about that?" replied the soldier. "Beside you, so brave and robust, I was what the shadow is to the body."
"By the devil! Look at the shadow! My friend Eustace!" the captain exclaimed and laughed, and addressing me he added pointing at his companion Eustace:
"Let me have two or three thousand shadows like that, and the first battle that we fight on the other side of the Rhine, I shall bring back a herd of Frankish prisoners."
"You are a captain of renown! I, like so many other poor waifs, are good only to obey, to fight and to be killed. We are only meat for battles," replied the old blacksmith with an envious look and his lips slightly losing their color.
"Captain," I said to Marion, "I presume you wish to see Victorin and his mother?"
"Yes, I have a report to render to Victorin of a journey that my friend and I have just made."
"I followed you as a soldier," Eustace said; "the name of an obscure horseman must not be remembered before Victoria the Great."
The captain shrugged his shoulders with impatience and jokingly shook his enormous fist at his friend.
"Captain," I insisted, addressing Marion, "let us hasten to Victoria. I should have been with her since dawn. I am late."
"Friend Eustace," Marion said, starting to walk with me toward Victoria's residence, "will you stay here, or wait for me at our lodging?"