‘Suppose I were to tell you, ‘ said Paul Delroze, ‘that I once stood face to face with him on French. . . .’
Élisabeth looked up at him with the fond expression of a bride to whom the least word of the man she loves is a subject of wonder:
‘You have seen William II. in France?’
‘Saw him with my own eyes; and I have never forgotten a single one of the details that marked the meeting. And yet it happened very long ago.’
He was speaking with a sudden seriousness, as though the revival of that memory had awakened the most painful thoughts in his mind.
‘Tell me about it, won’t you, Paul?’ asked Élisabeth.
‘Yes, I will, ‘ he said. ‘In any case, though I was only a child at the time, the incident played so tragic a part in my life that I am bound to tell you the whole story.’
The train stopped and they got out at Corvigny, the last station on the local branch line which, starting from the chief town in the department, runs through the Liseron Valley and ends, fifteen miles from the frontier, at the foot of the little Lorraine city which Vauban, as he tells us in his ‘Memoirs, ‘ surrounded ‘with the most perfect demilunes imaginable.’
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