"M. de la Miraudière? Ha, ha, ha!" roared Florestan. "What! my dear Louis, you really take that fellow seriously? You believe in his title, in his cross, in his campaigns, his wounds, his duels, and his high-sounding name?"
"Enough of this jesting," said the pretended commandant, colouring with vexation. "Even friendly raillery has its limits, my dear fellow."
"M. Jerome Porquin," began Florestan, then, turning to Louis, he added, pointing to the usurer, "his real name is Porquin, and a very appropriate name it is, it seems to me."
Then once more addressing the pretended commandant, Florestan added, in a tone that admitted of no reply:
"This is the second time I have been obliged to forbid your calling me your dear friend, M. Porquin. It is different with me, I have bought and paid for the right to call you my dear, my enormously, entirely too dear M. Porquin, for you have swindled me most outrageously—"
"Really, monsieur, I will not allow—"
"What is that? Since when has M. Porquin become so terribly sensitive?" cried Saint-Herem, with an affectation of intense astonishment. "What has happened? Oh, yes, I understand. It is your presence, my friend Louis, that makes this much too dear M. Porquin squirm so when I expose his falsehoods and his absurd pretensions. To settle this vexed question once for all, I must tell you—and let us see if he will have the effrontery to contradict me—who M. le Commandant de la Miraudière really is. He has never served his country except in the sutler's department. He went to Madrid in that capacity during the late war, and as he proved to be too great an expense to the government, he was asked to take himself off. He did so, and transformed himself into what he calls a man of affairs, or, in other words, into a usurer, and an intermediary in all sorts of shady transactions. The decoration he wears is that of the Golden Spur, a papal order, which one holy man procured from another holy man as a reward for his assistance in a most atrocious swindle. He has never fought a duel in his life, in the first place because he is one of the biggest cowards that ever lived, and in the second place because he bears such a bad reputation that he knows perfectly well that no respectable man would condescend to fight with him, and that if he becomes insolent the only thing to do is to give him a sound thrashing."
"When you want to make use of me you do not treat me in this fashion, monsieur," said the usurer, sullenly.
"When I need you, I pay you, M. Porquin, and as I know all your tricks, my too dear M. Porquin, I feel it my duty to warn my friend, M. Richard, against you. You are doubtless eager to devour him; in fact, it is more than likely that you have already begun to weave your toils around him, but—"
"That is the way some persons reward faithful service!" exclaimed M. Porquin, bitterly. "I reveal a secret of the highest importance to him, and—"