"Mon Dieu! yes, madame."
"So the first French blood has already been spilled by Frenchmen!" murmured the viscountess. "And you, Monsieur le Duc, were the one to set the example?"
"I was, madame."
"You, so calm and cool and shrewd!"
"When one upholds an unjust cause against me it sometimes happens that I become very unreasonable because I am so earnest in my support of what is reasonable."
"You are not wounded, I trust?"
"No, I was more fortunate this time than at Lignes and Paris. Indeed, I thought that I had had my fill of civil war, and was done with it forever; but I was mistaken. What would you have? Man always forms his plans without consulting his passions, the true architects of his life, which give an entirely different shape to the structure, when they do not overturn it altogether."
Madame de Cambes smiled, for she remembered that Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld had said that for Madame de Longueville's lovely eyes he had made war on kings, and would make war on the gods.
This smile did not escape the duke, and he gave the viscountess no time to follow up the thought which gave it birth.
"Allow me to offer you my congratulations, madame," he continued, "for you are, in truth, a very model of valor."