As he feared, too, it turned out.

Young legs caught up old ones: the stranger overtook Jehan, overtook the donkeys.

A moment, and he passed under the arch abreast of them, a broad smile of acknowledgment on his heated face.

He appeared to think that the gate had been kept open out of kindness to him.
And to be grateful.

The war with Savoy--Italian Savoy which, like an octopus, wreathed clutching arms about the free city of Geneva--had come to an end some months before.