We can sit on this seat, outside the inn, in the scent of the flowers and smoke our cigarette." To which proposal Monsieur de Gemosac assented readily enough.

For he was an old man, and to such the importance of small things, such as dinner or a passing personal comfort, are apt to be paramount.

Moreover, he was a remnant of that class to which France owed her downfall among the nations; a class represented faithfully enough by its King, Louis XVI., who procrastinated even on the steps of the guillotine.
The wind went down with the sun, as had been foretold by River Andrew, and the quiet of twilight lay on the level landscape like sleep when the two travellers returned to the seat at the inn door.

A distant curlew was whistling cautiously to its benighted mate, but all other sounds were still.

The day was over.
"You remember," said Colville to his companion, "that six months after the execution of the King, a report ran through Paris and all France that the Dillons had succeeded in rescuing the Dauphin from the Temple." "That was in July, 1793--just fifty-seven years ago--the news reached me in Austria," answered the Marquis.
Colville glanced sideways at his companion, whose face was set with a stubbornness almost worthy of the tenacious Bourbons themselves.
"The Queen was alive then," went on the Englishman, half diffidently, as if prepared for amendment or correction.