“You unhappy fellow, you mean to gamble again?”
“But I tell you again that I have lit on an infallible sequence.”
“Own brother to the one with which you threw away the sixty thousand livres from the amount you stole at the Portuguese Ambassador’s?”
“Money got over the devil’s back goes under his belly,” replied Beausire sententiously. “I always did think that the way I got that cash brought bad luck.”
“Is this fresh lot coming from an inheritance? have you an uncle who has died in the Indies or America and left you the ten louis?”
“Nicole Legay,” rejoined Beausire with a lofty air, “these ten will be earned not only honestly but honorably, for a cause which interests me as well as the rest of the nobility of France.”
“So you are a nobleman, Friend Beausire?” jeered the lady.
“You may say so: we have it stated so in the birth entry on the register of St. Paul’s, and signed by your servitor, Jean Baptiste Toussaint de Beausire, on the day when I gave my name to our boy—--“
“A handsome present that was,” gibed Nicole.
“And my estate,” added the so-called captain emphatically.