“But as if that mattered! As if anything mattered—only to get away safely!” Roy said energetically. “Jean, you are a good fellow! Is this for me to eat? I’m as hungry as a bear! Jean, I shall always think better of Frenchmen for your sake.”
“Yet M’sieu will doubtless fight us one day.”
“I shall fight Buonaparte, not the French nation. I like some of your people awfully—some at Fontainebleau, and some at Verdun. And Mademoiselle de St. Roques most of all.”
“Oui, M’sieu. M’sieu had better eat.”
“All right, I’m eating, and you must too. Oh, lots of French have been as good and as kind to us détenus as they possibly could be. And I only know one single lodging-house keeper who behaved like a brute. Most of them have been just the other way. Why, they have kept on lodgers month after month, out of sheer kindness, when they couldn’t pay anything because no money reached them from England. I know all that! And I like the French—only not Boney!”
Jean smiled to himself.
“Cependant, M’sieu, the army of the Emperor is made of French soldiers.”
“Can’t help that,” retorted Roy. “And they can’t help it either, poor fellows—most of them. I say, this cheese is uncommonly good. Where did you manage to hide it away, so as to keep it from the gendarmes? Jean, were you long at Bitche? Tell me about it.”
Jean was cautious. He evidently preferred not to enter into details. It was better for Roy’s own sake that he should not know too much. It seemed, however, that on Jean’s arrival at Bitche, he had found one of the gendarmes to be an old acquaintance; and through this gendarme, not through his soldier-friend, he had obtained a temporary post in the fortress. A man who did rough work, chopping and carrying wood and so on, had fallen ill and had gone home for a fortnight to a neighbouring village. Meanwhile, Jean was allowed to undertake his work.
This gave Jean a good opportunity to study the fortress and to make himself acquainted with the surrounding country. He did not fully explain to Roy the maturing of his plans during that fortnight, nor precisely what those plans had been. The careful manner in which he avoided speaking of his soldier-friend made Roy pretty sure that the said friend had had some sort of hand in aiding his escape; but he put no more questions in this direction. Jean had had two or three glimpses of Roy from time to time; but he had held carefully aloof, until he saw his way to action. Then he contrived to be sent into the yard just when the better class of prisoners was assembled there; and the rest Roy knew.