"What!" he said with considerable emotion, "Are you Valentine Guillois?"
"Yes, sir," the hunter replied with a modest bow.
"Oh, sir!" the young man exclaimed warmly, "I am delighted to form your personal acquaintance. Everybody respects and cherishes you here, because you maintain that title of Frenchman, of which we are all so proud. Thanks, count, thanks; and now, by heavens, ask of me anything you please, and I shall not know how to repay the pleasure you have caused me.
"Good heavens!" the count replied; "for the present I will only ask you a very simple matter. You will soon be visited, if he has not already arrived, by an aide-de-camp of General Guerrero."
"Colonel Suarez?"
"Yes."
"He is here."
"Already?"
"He has only been here an hour."
"He has told you nothing?"