The Three Hostages

CHAPTER XV-1

CHAPTER XV

HOW A FRENCH NOBLEMAN DISCOVERED FEAR

I have twice heard from Turpin the story I am going to set down--once before he understood much of it, a second time when he had got some enlightenment--but I doubt whether to his dying day he will ever be perfectly clear about what happened to him.

I have not had time to introduce Turpin properly, and in any case I am not sure that the job is not beyond me. My liking for the French is profound, but I believe there is no race on earth which the average Briton is less qualified to comprehend. For myself, I could far more easily get inside the skin of a Boche. I knew he was as full of courage as a Berserker, pretty mad, but with that queer core of prudence which your Latin possesses and which in the long run makes his madness less dangerous