‘Contraband beast,’ added Rigaud, ‘bring Port wine! I’ll drink nothing but Porto-Porto.’
The contraband beast, however, assuring all present, with his significant finger, that he peremptorily declined to leave his post at the door, Signor Panco offered his services. He soon returned with the bottle of wine: which, according to the custom of the place, originating in a scarcity of corkscrews among the Collegians (in common with a scarcity of much else), was already opened for use.
‘Madman! A large glass,’ said Rigaud.
Signor Panco put a tumbler before him; not without a visible conflict of feeling on the question of throwing it at his head.
‘Haha!’ boasted Rigaud. ‘Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman. A gentleman from the beginning, and a gentleman to the end. What the Devil! A gentleman must be waited on, I hope? It’s a part of my character to be waited on!’
He half filled the tumbler as he said it, and drank off the contents when he had done saying it.
‘Hah!’ smacking his lips. ‘Not a very old prisoner that! I judge by your looks, brave sir, that imprisonment will subdue your blood much sooner than it softens this hot wine. You are mellowing—losing body and colour already. I salute you!’
He tossed off another half glass: holding it up both before and afterwards, so as to display his small, white hand.
‘To business,’ he then continued. ‘To conversation. You have shown yourself more free of speech than body, sir.’
‘I have used the freedom of telling you what you know yourself to be. You know yourself, as we all know you, to be far worse than that.’