CARBON:
I have paid my company—’tis mine.
I bow but to headquarters.
DE GUICHE:
So?—in faith!
That will suffice.
(Addressing himself to the cadets):
I can despise your taunts
’Tis well known how I bear me in the war;
At Bapaume, yesterday, they saw the rage
With which I beat back the Count of Bucquoi;
Assembling my own men, I fell on his,
And charged three separate times!
CYRANO (without lifting his eyes from his book):
And your white scarf?
DE GUICHE (surprised and gratified):
You know that detail?. . .Troth! It happened thus:
While caracoling to recall the troops
For the third charge, a band of fugitives
Bore me with them, close by the hostile ranks:
I was in peril—capture, sudden death!—
When I thought of the good expedient
To loosen and let fall the scarf which told
My military rank; thus I contrived
—Without attention waked—to leave the foes,
And suddenly returning, reinforced
With my own men, to scatter them! And now,
—What say you, Sir?
(The cadets pretend not to be listening, but the cards and the dice-boxes remain suspended in their hands, the smoke of their pipes in their cheeks. They wait.)
CYRANO:
I say, that Henri Quatre
Had not, by any dangerous odds, been forced
To strip himself of his white helmet plume.
(Silent delight. The cards fall, the dice rattle. The smoke is puffed.)
DE GUICHE:
The ruse succeeded, though!
(Same suspension of play, etc.)
CYRANO:
Oh, may be! But
One does not lightly abdicate the honor
To serve as target to the enemy
(Cards, dice, fall again, and the cadets smoke with evident delight):
Had I been present when your scarf fell low,
—Our courage, Sir, is of a different sort—
I would have picked it up and put it on.