The luck, as we say, had run all along in favour of Poivre. Malin was becoming savage. He lost all his money, then his next day’s rations, then his shirt (not worth much). Poivre was one of those gamblers who take infernal delight in heaping on the agony when their opponent loses his temper badly. He made the other furious by pretending to pity him for his ill-fortune; and when he got down to the shirt, calmly suggested whether there was not something else he had that he might stake in order to regain his luck.
“You’d take my soul,” cried Malin, with an
oath so loud and frightful, or rather such a volley of them, that the other men in the room came crowding around them.
“Not worth anything,” replied Poivre; “can’t see it.”
“It’s worth as much as yours.”
“That’s not saying much.”
The atmosphere was thick with oaths, and as oaths and devils go together, the atmosphere must have been of a sulphureous nature, as it always is at such times, though we may not notice it.
“Don’t talk to me, poltron!” cried Malin.
“That’s the second time you have called me so,” said Poivre, starting up, his temper rising at a bound to “stormy,” and shaking his fist at the other.
“And not the last!” shouted Malin, glad to find the other as angry as himself. “I tell you, you are a poltron, before all these gentlemen. You have no more courage than a rabbit, and no more spirit than an old woman. You ran away