“Certainly I do.”
“What! You valued him at first at something lower than the rest of us?”
He knew very well the spiteful jealousy aroused in this rival bosom by the stranger’s success, and delighted to prick and goad it.
La Coque ignored the exclamation. His patron’s amiable purpose was perfectly plain to him.
“I recognise, at this moment, M. Tiretta’s art to be supreme,” he said; “only I spell it, for my part, with a little a.”
“‘Elles ne sont point bonnes,’ remarked the little low fox of the big high mulberries,” murmured la Roque silkily.
The other darted a malignant glance at the speaker, but restrained himself. The duke, his nose wrinkled in a covert snigger, saw something in the insolent face which stiffened his own.
“An innuendo, Charles my friend?” he said. “Or are you meaning nothing but to belittle, after your way, M. Tiretta’s gift?”
La Coque set his white teeth and nodded. He looked very much like a snapping terrier, whom it would be dangerous to handle incautiously.
“I do not belittle his gift,” he said. “I spell it with a smaller letter than you, that is all.”