"What's much more important," protested his wife, "is that you should not excite yourself like this. Here, tell us all about it instead, quite calmly."
Old Morestal was never known to refuse to talk. He therefore began his story, in short, slow sentences, as she wished, describing all the details of attack and all the incidents of the journey to Börsweilen. But, carried away once more, he raised his voice, grew indignant, worked himself into a rage, burst into sarcasm:
"Oh, they showed no lack of civility!... It was, 'Monsieur le commissaire spécial!... Monsieur le conseiller d'arrondissement!'... Weisslicht had his mouth crammed with our titles!... All the same, at one o'clock in the morning, we were safely locked up in two nice little rooms in the town-hall at Börsweilen.... In quod, what!... With a probable indictment for complicity, espionage, high treason and the devil knows what hanging over our heads!... Only, in that case, gentlemen, you should not carry politeness so far as to release your captives from their handcuffs; and the windows of your cells ought not to be closed with bars too slight to be of any use; and you ought not to let one of your prisoners keep his pocket-knife. If you do, as long as that prisoner has any grit in him—and a file to his knife, by Jove!—he will try what he can do. And I did try, by Jingo! At four o'clock in the morning, after cutting the window-pane and filing or loosening four of the bars, old Morestal let himself down by a waste-pipe and took to his heels. Kind friends, farewell!... It was now only a question of getting home.... The Col du Diable? The Albern Woods? The Butte-aux-Loups? No such fool! The vermin were bound to be swarming on that side.... And, in fact, I heard the drums beating and the trumpets sounding the alarm and the horses galloping. They were hunting for me, of course!... But how could they have thought of hunting for me six miles away, in the Val de Sainte-Marie, right in the middle of the Forest of Arzance? And I trotted ... I trotted until I was simply done.... I crossed the border at eight o'clock, unseen and unknown. Morestal's foot was on his native heath! At ten o'clock, I saw the steeple of Saint-Élophe from the Côte-Blanche and I cut straight across, so as to get home quicker. And here I am! A bit tired, I admit, but quite presentable.... Well, what do you say to old Morestal now, eh?"
He had stood up and, forgetting all about the fatigue of the night, was enlivening his discourse with a savage display of gesture which alarmed his wife.
"And my poor father was not able to escape?" asked Suzanne.
"No, they had taken care to search him," replied Morestal. "Besides, they watched him more closely than they did me ... so he could not do as I did...." And he added. "And a good job too! For I should have been left to languish in their prisons until the end of an interminable trial; whereas he, in forty-eight hours ... But this is all talk. The authorities can't be far away. I want to have my report ready. There are certain things which I suspect ... the business was a plot from start to finish...."
He interrupted himself, as though startled by an unexpected thought, and sat for a long time motionless, with his head in his hands. Then, suddenly, he struck the table with his fist:
"That's it! I understand the whole thing now! Upon my word, it's taken me long enough!"
"What?" asked his wife.