I read it partly in his expression, partly in his furtive manner. He had seemed to dismiss me from his mind after our introduction; yet no man ever watched another with more furtive and brooding attention than the Baron Carl von Lichtenberg as he sat watching me.
"Well," said the Baron, rising to go, "to-morrow, we will expect you in the afternoon. Till then, farewell."
He saluted me as he left the room in the same forced, half-jocular manner with which he had returned my salute when I entered.
Then he was gone, and I was playing again with Marengo on the hearthrug, and my father, cigar in mouth, had returned to the letters he had been engaged on when the Baron was announced.
"Joubert," said I, as he tucked me up in my bed that night, "I wish we were home again. Joubert, I don't like the Marquis de Carabas."
Joubert grunted. His opinion of the Marquis was the same as mine, evidently, but be was too much of a nursery despot to admit the fact. "Attention!" cried he, holding the candle-stick in one hand, and the finger and thumb of the other ready to extinguish the light. "Attention!" cried Joubert, as though he were addressing a company of the "Growlers." "One!" I nestled down in bed. "Two!" I shut my eyes. "Three!" he snuffed out the candle.
That was the formula every night ere I marched off for dreamland with my knapsack on my back, a soldier to the last buttons on my gaiters.