This able infantry officer is a man of great distinction. He has directed the delicate service of "statistics" with much tact and discretion for the past three years. His fair complexion, blue eyes, blonde hair betray his Alsatian origin. This handsome bachelor, verging on the fifties, is very much a man of the world, is received in the most exclusive sets, and has been known to carry on the most intimate conversations with charming ladies in his office. Was the subject of these talks National Defence? Who knows?
In the officers' room there was animated talk.
"Then it is an artilleryman again?" asked Lieutenant Armandelle, a regular colossus with a brick-red complexion, who had passed long years in Africa at the head of a detachment of Zouaves.
Captain Loreuil was sharpening a pencil. He stopped, and, throwing himself back in his chair, replied with a smile:
"No, my dear fellow, this time it is to be a sapper." Looking over his spectacles he softly hummed the old refrain of Thérèse:
"Ah, my boy, come what will, you meet it with a smile!"
"By Jove, old man, why be gloomy?" answered the lively captain. "We can only live once! Let us make the best use of our time, then! Why not be jolly?"
Judging by his looks, Captain Loreuil had followed his own advice. Clean-shaven, plump of face, stout of figure, he wore glasses, large round glasses set in gold frames, for he was exceptionally short-sighted. His colleagues had nicknamed him "The Lawyer." It was easy to see that he was much more at home in mufti than in uniform. He would say, laughing:
"I have all the looks of a territorial, and that is unfortunate, considering I belong to the active contingent."
Loreuil was one of the most highly appreciated officers of the Second Bureau. Had anyone examined the hands of "The Lawyer" just then, he would have seen that they were roughened and had horny lumps on them of recent formation. His fingers, all twisted out of shape at the tips, seamed with scars, led one to suppose that the captain was not entirely a man of sedentary office life. In fact, he had just returned after a fairly long absence. He had disappeared for six months. It was rumoured in the departments that he had been one of a gang of masons who were constructing a fort on a foreign frontier, a fort, the plans of which he had got down to the smallest detail. But questions had not been asked, and the captain had not, of course, given his colleagues the slightest hint, the smallest indication of how those six months had been passed. Besides, unforeseen journeys, sudden disappearances, unexpected returns, mysterious missions, made up the ordinary lot of those attached to the Second Bureau.