"Wait," said the commissioner, looking through his papers. "Lieutenant de Claviers-Grandchamp." "A noble!" cried the sub-prefect; "that explains everything. He was evidently very desirous to obey orders, and then, at the last moment, he balked. Why? I'll tell you; but first listen to a little story."--He was an old _boulevardier_ and fond of telling stories.-- "Under the Empire there was a journalist of the opposition who wrote very violent articles in a 'red' newspaper. One fine day some one discovers that he writes, under a false name, others just as violent but on the other side, in a government sheet. 'There's nothing left for me but to disappear,' he groaned, and he talked about blowing out his brains.--'Bah!' said one of his friends, 'you'll get clear of it by changing your café.'--He was not wrong. Everything can be arranged in life, so long as one can change his café. But the nobles, they can't do it. There's the whole story of your lieutenant. He thought he wouldn't be well received at the Jockey Club. That's what comes of having too swell a café." While the jovial-minded servants of a régime in which people have, in truth, changed their cafés a good deal, were laughing carelessly at the philosophic sub-prefect's outbreak, that short-lived tragedy, which lacked not even the requisite irony, came to an end with the dispersion of the actors. The protesting peasants rushed into the church, which was opened at last, and the hoof-beats of the horses, mingled with the jangling of the scabbards, died away in the yellowing woods that lie between Hugueville and Saint-Mihiel. The detachment rode more rapidly. The sun, shining clear at last, warmed the air. It shone on the metal of the helmets and the gleaming flanks of the horses, which tossed their heads impatiently, scenting the road to the stables. Having given his orders, Landri had taken his place at the head of the column, with so savage an expression that his men, indifferent as they were to the moral crisis through which their leader had passed, were impressed by it. Vigouroux in fact had more definite reason than the commissioner for surprise at a volte-face which absolutely gave the lie to the words they had exchanged a few moments earlier. But upon him, too, his comrade's face made too deep an impression for him to try to speak to him. He rode along in the rear, secretly well pleased, in spite of himself, at the thought that paragraph 9 of Article 2 of the fifth part of the Military Annual was about to undergo a slight modification. He would advance one step on the seniority list of lieutenants of cavalry. But the artless wish to have a third _galon_ on one's cap a little sooner does not debar excellence of heart, and he was quite sincere when he pressed Landri's hand in the courtyard of the barracks, at the end of the march.