“Then you cannot be more than twenty-seven. Twenty-seven!” and he gazed at the squat figure, the gnarled hands, the seamed and rugged countenance. “No,” said Pasdeloup, “I do not think I am more than twenty-seven; but for many of those years, M. le Comte, I struggled day by day to keep the soul in the body. That ages one, you see.” “Yes,” agreed his master, sadly, “I see.” “At first I was only in the way,” said Pasdeloup. “No one wanted me, and I received everybody’s kicks and blows. Then I grew big enough to help with the pigs. Since I have been keeper of the gate for M. le Comte,” he added eagerly, “I have had an easy life.” “Yet I have found you there whenever I passed, day or night.” “Ah, monsieur has remarked that?” cried Pasdeloup, his face glowing with pleasure. “There is a corner between the gate and the wall,” he explained, “where one is sheltered from the weather. And I have learned to sleep with one eye open, watching for monsieur. It is a thing soon learned. And I sleep none the less soundly.” “I am glad of that,” said his master, gently, and stared for a moment gloomily down at the crowd upon the lawn. “This Revolution is not so surprising after all,” he added, half to himself. CHAPTER XI. AT THE BELLE IMAGE. BUT the scene below soon drew M. le Comte from his abstraction; for even in the few minutes we had spent in listening to Pasdeloup’s story, told with a rude and simple eloquence which I have tried in vain to reproduce, it had assumed a new and more threatening aspect. The flood which had swept into the château was pouring out of it again, bearing upon its crest furniture, draperies, railings, doors--everything, in a word, which could be wrenched from the building. All of this was thrown into a great pile in the middle of the lawn and a torch applied to it. Then as the flames leaped upward the marauders joined hands around it and started a wild dance. They had appropriated all the clothing they had found in the château, and it was not without a certain pang that I recognized one of my own coats in which I had taken especial pride making the circuit of the fire upon the back of a sturdy rascal, utterly incapable of appreciating its beauties, and wholly careless of preserving them. The effect under other circumstances would have been ludicrous enough; and indeed I found myself smiling after a moment, so trivial did the loss of my wardrobe appear in comparison with the dangers which threatened us. A few hours before it had seemed a great disaster; now it scarcely merited a second thought. For it was no longer a question of whether I should enter Poitiers in becoming state, but whether I should live to enter it at all. Besides, for some hours I had ceased to care as to the effect my appearance would have on either M. de Benseval or his daughter.