Bernadine accepted the challenge.
“It is not I, alas! who may call myself Caesar,” he replied, “although it is certainly you who are about to die.”
Sogrange turned to the man who stood behind his chair.
“If I might trouble you for a little dry toast?” he inquired. “A modern but very uncomfortable ailment,” he added, with a sigh. “One’s digestion must march with the years, I suppose.”
Bernadine smiled.
“Your toast you shall have, with pleasure, Marquis,” he said, “but as for your indigestion, do not let that trouble you any longer. I think that I can promise you immunity from that annoying complaint for the rest of your life.”
“You are doing your best,” Peter declared, leaning back in his chair, “to take away my appetite.”
Bernadine looked searchingly from one to the other of his two guests.
“Yes,” he admitted, “you are brave men. I do not know why I should ever have doubted it. Your pose is excellent. I have no wish, however, to see you buoyed up by a baseless optimism. A somewhat remarkable chance has delivered you into my hands. You are my prisoners. You, Peter, Baron de Grost, I have hated all my days. You have stood between me and the achievement of some of my most dearly-cherished tasks. Always I have said to myself that the day of reckoning must come. It has arrived. As for you, Marquis de Sogrange, if my personal feelings towards you are less violent, you still represent the things absolutely inimical to me and my interests. The departure of you two men was the one thing necessary for the successful completion of certain tasks which I have in hand at the present moment.”
Peter pushed away his plate.