“This health that you propose,” said Madame Dubarry, who sat on the marshal’s left hand, “we are all ready to drink, but the oldest of us should take the lead.”
“Is it you, that that concerns, or me, Taverney?” said the marshal, laughing.
“I do not believe,” said another on the opposite side, “that M. de Richelieu is the senior of our party.”
“Then it is you, Taverney,” said the duke.
“No, I am eight years younger than you! I was born in 1704,” returned he.
“How rude,” said the marshal, “to expose my eighty-eight years.”
“Impossible, duke! that you are eighty-eight,” said M. de Condorcet.
“It is, however, but too true; it is a calculation easy to make, and therefore unworthy of an algebraist like you, marquis. I am of the last century—the great century, as we call it. My date is 1696.”
“Impossible!” cried De Launay.
“Oh, if your father were here, he would not say impossible, he, who, when governor of the Bastile, had me for a lodger in 1714.”