“I believe I have the most impudent son in Corsica.”
“I am sure that I have the most loving mother in all France,” said the Count, calmly.
To equalise a quarrel, when one of the participants is angry the other should also be angry. It is unfair for one to remain cool, calm, and collected, while the other is worked up to a fury of passion. If two soldiers meet in battle, one with a sword four feet long and the other with one but half that length, the contest is unequal; the one with the long sword keeps the other contestant at a distance, though the latter makes vain attacks upon his well-protected adversary. So in a lingual battle, the one who keeps his temper, who does not allow his voice to rise above an ordinary pitch, is the soldier with the long sword.
It must not be supposed that Countess Mont d’Oro allowed these thoughts to pass through her mind. She replied promptly to her son’s sarcastic allusion to her love for him.
“Why should I love you?” she cried. “Even when a child you had an ungovernable temper, and since you have grown up—I will not say since you became a man—your extravagance, your disregard of my wishes, even the slightest of them—has driven from my heart any love that I might have had for you. I am glad that your father lived long enough to understand you. He did wisely in leaving all to me. I was to make you an allowance at my discretion. I have paid your debts—gambling debts, I suppose they were principally—until my own income is greatly impaired.”
“And why have you been so generous?” asked her son.
“To avoid scandal. I did not wish our family affairs to become a subject for Parisian gossip. I do not care for what is said here in Corsica, but such news travels fast.”
“I presume from what you have said that you intend to cut off my allowance?”
“I do, as soon as you are married to Vivienne Batistelli. You must remember that I am not yet forty—I may marry again, and I do not wish my husband to have a dowerless bride.”
The Count smiled grimly. “It is all right for me to become a pensioner on my wife’s bounty?”