"Dismissed the service—and for what?" asked he, bluntly.
"If not broke, at least not employed;" said I, bitterly.
"A Royalist?"
"Not the least of one, but suspected."
"Just so. Your letters—your private papers ransacked, and brought in evidence against you. Your conversations with your intimates noted down and attested—every word you dropped in a moment of disappointment or anger; every chance phrase you uttered when provoked, all quoted; wasn't that it?"
As he spoke this, with a rapid and almost impetuous utterance, I for the first time, noticed that both the expressions and the accent implied breeding and education. Not all his vehemence could hide the evidences of former cultivation.
"How comes it," asked I, eagerly, "that such a man as you are, is to be found thus? You certainly did not always serve in the ranks?"
"I had my grade," was his short, dry reply.
"You were a quarter-master; perhaps a sous-lieutenant?" said I, hoping by the flattery of the surmise to lead him to talk further.
"I was the colonel of a dragoon regiment," said he; sternly; "and that neither the least brave nor the least distinguished in the French army."