"I beg your pardon, Marthe.... You too, father, forgive me.... Please forgive me.... There are situations in which we are bound to pardon one another for all the pain that we can give one another."
Judging by the contraction of his features, one would have thought that he was on the verge of crying, like a child trying to restrain its tears and failing in the effort.
Morestal stared at him in amazement. His wife looked at him aslant and felt fear rising within her, as at the approach of a great calamity.
But the tent opened once more. M. Le Corbier entered. Special Commissary Jorancé, who had been brought to the French camp by the German gendarmes, was with him.
Jorancé simply nodded to the Morestals and asked:
"Suzanne?"
"She is well," said Marthe.
Meanwhile, Le Corbier had sat down and was turning over the papers.
With his three-cornered face, ending in a short, peaked beard, his clean-shaven upper-lip, his sallow complexion and his black clothes, he wore the solemn mien of a Protestant divine. People said of him that, in the days of the Revolution, he would have been Robespierre or Saint-Just. His eyes, which expressed sympathy and almost affection, belied the suggestion. In reality, he was a conscientious man, who owed the gravity of his appearance to an excessive sense of duty.