“Do not let us get warm, sir: we quarrelled once and you were obliged to go out and pick up your sword which I threw out of the window. You will remember?” went on the count, seeing that the man made no reply: “it is a good thing to have a memory. I ask you again would you change your actual position, though down to the solitary louis you ‘extracted’ from young Toussaint”—this time the allegation passed without protest—“for the precarious scrape from which I relieved you?”
“No, my lord, you are right—I should not change. At that epoch, alas! I was parted from my darling Nicole.”
“To say nothing of being hunted by the police, on account of your robbing the Portuguese Embassy. What the mischief has become of that case, a villainous one, as I remember it, Captain B.?”
“It has been dropped, my lord,” was the reply.
“So much the better: though I would not reckon on its not being picked up again. The police are awful for raking up past grievances, and the ruling powers might want to be on good terms with Portugal. However, that apart, in spite of the hard lines to which you are reduced, you are happy. If you had a thousand louis, your felicity would be complete, eh?”
Nicole’s eyes glittered and her partner’s flashed flames.
“Lord be good to us,” cried the latter: “with half I would buy a lot in the country and live a rural life on the rest like a country squire!”
“Like Cincinnatus!”
“While Nicole would educate the boy.”
“Like Cornelia! Death of my life, Captain Beausire! not only would this be exemplary but touching: do you hope to earn as much as that in the piece of business you have in hand?”