“Yes,” he resumed; “I assure you that I fully understand; I feel for you as keenly as you do yourself. I am wretched,” he went on, laying his hand lovingly on my shoulder, “when I think that if I could have stayed with you to-night, I might have been able, if we talked till morning, to relieve you of a little of your unhappiness. I can lend you any number of books, but you won’t want to read if you’re feeling like that. And I shan’t be able to get anyone else to take my duty here; I’ve been off now twice running because my girl came down to see me.” And he knitted his brows partly with vexation and also in the effort to decide, like a doctor, what remedy he might best apply to my disease. “Run along and light the fire in my quarters,” he called to a trooper who passed us. “Hurry up; get a move on!” After which he turned once more to me, and his eyeglass and his peering, myopic gaze hinted an allusion to our great friendship. “No! To see you here, in these barracks where I have spent so much time thinking about you, I can scarcely believe my eyes. I must be dreaming. And how are you? Better, I hope. You must tell me all about yourself presently. We’ll go up to my room; we mustn’t hang about too long on the square, there’s the devil of a draught; I don’t feel it now myself, but you aren’t accustomed to it, I’m afraid of your catching cold. And what about your work; have you started yet? No? You are a quaint fellow! If I had your talent I’m sure I should be writing morning, noon and night. It amuses you more to do nothing? What a pity it is that it’s the useless fellows like me who are always ready to work, and the ones who could if they wanted to, won’t. There, and I’ve clean forgotten to ask you how your grandmother is. Her Proudhons are in safe keeping. I never part from them.” An officer, tall, handsome, majestic, emerged with slow and solemn gait from the foot of a staircase. Saint-Loup saluted him and arrested the perpetual instability of his body for the moment occupied in holding his hand against the peak of his cap. But he had flung himself into the action with so much force, straightening himself with so sharp a movement, and, the salute ended, let his hand fall with so abrupt a relaxation, altering all the positions of shoulder, leg, and eyeglass, that this moment was one not so much of immobility as of a throbbing tension in which were neutralised the excessive movements which he had just made and those on which he was about to embark. Meanwhile the officer, without coming any nearer us, calm, benevolent, dignified, imperial, representing, in short, the direct opposite of Saint-Loup, himself also, but without haste, raised his hand to the peak of his cap. “I must just say a word to the Captain,” whispered Saint-Loup. “Be a good fellow, and go and wait for me in my room. It’s the second on the right, on the third floor; I’ll be with you in a minute.”