Castillon now approached, and slapping the colonel familiarly over the shoulder, called out, "Say now, my boy—has your rank of colonel made you near-sighted?"
Oliver trembled and turned purple with rage. He looked Castillon up and down, and replied: "Who are you, sir, to permit yourself such familiarity?"
"Well, well! Forsooth, it is I, Castillon, your old foreman, who taught you how to handle a file and hammer a piece of iron, when you were our apprentice."
"Give you good day, my dear sir, give you good day," retorted Oliver haughtily and impatiently; and continuing his conversation with Lebrenn: "And what chance brings you to Paris? Tell me about it."
But Castillon touched Oliver on the arm before he had time to get an answer, and said: "Say, my boy, have you truly become, to all intents and purposes, an aristocrat, since you belong to the staff of General Bonaparte, as Duchemin says, our old comrade of the Lines of Weissenburg, here, whom you don't seem to recognize either?"
"Hush, my old fellow," said Duchemin in Castillon's ear, "else he will have the commandant of Paris toss me into the headquarters of police, and then we won't be able to go to St. Antoine."
After a moment's silence, Colonel Oliver spoke, with difficulty holding himself in: "I would reply to Monsieur Castillon, that if I was his apprentice, it is nothing to blush for. He should understand that my age and the rank I owe to my sword render inappropriate the pleasantries permissible when I was eighteen."
"Pardon, excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis!" rejoined Castillon, not a whit put down by Oliver's manner. "Ah, that's how the staff of General Bonaparte comports itself!"
"As to you, who are still in the service," continued Colonel Oliver rudely to Duchemin, "do not forget that we put the insolent in cells, and shoot the unruly."
"I said nothing, Colonel," replied Duchemin quietly.