I introduced myself. We shook hands.
"You have come a long way, comrade. What shall we do with you?"
"You have a spare horse to lend him?" said the Grand Duchess. "Now, if I may offer a little advice, take him at once to your civil or military authorities. He has come straight from Germany, and knows much that may be valuable to this country, where the flowers are lovely, but which is never sufficiently on its guard, I think."
As she spoke she was looking at some wild roses hanging over the edge of the bank. Lieutenant de Coigny plundered the thickest tufts and collected a pink bunch which he handed to the Grand Duchess.
"Thank you, monsieur," she said, with a charming smile to the young man, who was under the spell of her wondrous beauty. "Would you be good enough to make your horses stand aside? The road is narrow, and I must turn my car."
Then I utterly broke down.
Gone were my indifference of the night, my sudden emotion on entering France once more. They were things of the past. One thought alone obsessed me: in a quarter of an hour I should have lost her for ever.
Lieutenant de Coigny had made his men stand back. I heard the Grand Duchess say to him in her soft, tender voice:
"Excuse him, monsieur, he has just suffered greater shocks than the war will ever bring him."
And now I felt her hand on my brow.