"Stop! you don't see what I mean. They said to themselves: 'A woman would hinder us in marching; we should have to think of her if we retreat. In any case we must devote to the security of her person a troop of soldiers we could better employ elsewhere.' They did not choose to believe that I have succeeded in conquering the weakness of my body, and that my courage is equal to the greatness of my task; if they think so of me, can you wonder if they think it of you?"
"Of me!" cried Monsieur de Souday, furious at the mere suggestion. "I have given proofs of courage all my life!"
"All the world knows that, my dear marquis; but perhaps, remembering your age, they may have thought that your bodily vigor, like mine, was no longer equal to the ardor of your spirit."
"Oh, that's too much!" cried the old soldier of former days in a tone of the deepest indignation. "Why! there hasn't been a day for the last fifteen years that I haven't been six or eight hours in the saddle,--sometimes ten, sometimes twelve! In spite of my white hairs I can stand fatigue as well as any man. See what I can do still!"
Seizing the stool on which he was sitting, he struck it with such violence against the stone chimney-piece that he shattered the stool to bits and made a deep gash in the mantel. Brandishing above his head the leg of the hapless stool which remained in his hand, he cried out:--
"How many of your young dandies, Maître Petit-Pierre, could do that?"
"I never doubted your powers, my dear marquis; and that is why I say those gentlemen have made a great mistake in treating you like an invalid."
"An invalid! I? God's death!" cried the marquis, more and more exasperated, and totally forgetting the presence of the person with whom he was speaking. "An invalid! I? Well, this very evening, I'll tell them I renounce these functions, which are those, not of a gentleman, but a jailer."
"That's right!" interjected Petit-Pierre.
"Functions, which for the last two hours," continued the marquis, striding up and down the room, "I have been sending to all the devils."