Jean, on his side, was disturbed. This simple thing, the receiving a former comrade, seemed to him now a delicate problem to solve. Personally he should have inclined towards the affirmative. But neither Madame Oberlé nor the grandfather would admit any exception to the rule so strictly kept up to now--that no Germans, except quick and commonplace business men, should be admitted to the house of the old protesting deputy. They would never consent. But it was hard for Jean to show himself less tolerant in Strasburg than he had been in Munich, and at the first meeting on Alsatian ground to offend the young officer who had come to him with hand outstretched. He tried at least to put a note of cordiality into his answer: "I will come and see you, dear Farnow, with pleasure." The German understood, frowned, and was silent. Evidently others had refused even to visit him. He did not meet in Oberlé that systematic and complete hostility. His anger did not last, or he did not show it. He reached out his slender hand, the wrist of which looked like a bundle of steel threads covered with skin, and with the tips of his fingers he touched the hilt of his sword, which had not left his side. "I shall be charmed," he said at last. He ordered a bottle of Burgundy, and having filled Jean's glass and his own, drank. "To your return to Alsheim!" he said. Then, drinking it in a draught, he placed the glass upon the table. "I am really very pleased to see you again. I live pretty well alone, and you know my tastes outside my profession, which I adore, above which I place nothing whatever, nothing if it be not God, who is the great judge of it. I love hunting best--I think man is made to move in large spaces, to strengthen his power and his dominion over the beasts, when he has not the occasion to do it over his kind. For me there is no pleasure to equal it. Apropos of this, it seems that M. Oberlé has been ousted from his hunting rights?" "Yes," said Jean; "he has given them up almost entirely----" "Would you like to have a turn at my place? I have rented some shooting near Haguenau, half wood and half plain; I have roebuck which come from the forest--the ancient Sacred Forest; I have hares and pheasants, and snipe at the time of passage; and if you like glowworms, I have some who fly under the pine-trees and shine like the lances of my Hussars." The conversation ran on for a while on this subject. Then Farnow finished the bottle of Carolis wine with Jean, and lifting the hawthorn which beflowered his epaulet and letting it drop to the ground, said: "If you will allow me, Oberlé, I will go some way with you. What direction do you take?" "Towards the University!" "That is my way."