“Don’t be so sceptical. You ought to have more faith in me. I can tell you something else.”
“Go on, tell it.”
“Did you see that tall, serious, gray-haired colonel, with a beautiful beard, seated at the right of the general?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Colonel of the big thunderbolt?”
“The artillery——”
“If you like. Well, he is the old warrior that climbed up the mountain alone the last time to greet me. He trembled all over from age. I remember he leaned up against me and said:
“‘Honorable Willow, we shall never meet again.’” Another little whistle showed me that Fiam was much moved by his recollections.
By this time my European ideas were pretty nearly turned upside down. “What if Fiam should be right?” Two days later I called on the general with the pretext of thanking him for the excellent breakfast of moist bamboo roots that he had given me. I wanted to question him skilfully.
I found him with knitted brows bending over a map. Every once in a while he gave an order to some officer, which was received and obeyed in silence. They were coming and going very solemnly. We could hear the tramp of horses arriving and departing outside the tent. Far off the cannon roared.