"So be it, then," responded M. de Mornand, "so I ask you here before these gentleman, why, when I had the honour to invite a certain young lady to dance a few minutes ago, you took the liberty of saying to that young lady, 'Mlle. de Beaumesnil can not and must not dance with M. de Mornand.' Those were your very words."
"Those were my very words, monsieur. You have an excellent memory. I hope it will not play you false, presently."
"And I wish to say to M. de Maillefort," interposed the baron, "that he arrogates to himself an authority, a right, and a surveillance which belong to me exclusively, for in telling my ward that—"
"My dear baron," said the marquis, smilingly, interrupting M. de la Rochaiguë, "you are a model, paragon, and example for all guardians, past, present and future, as I will prove to you later, but permit me now to reply to M. de Mornand, whom I have just had the honour to congratulate upon his excellent memory, and to ask him if he recollects something I said to him at a certain matinée dansante given by the Duchesse de Senneterre,—something in relation to a slight scratch that was intended to fix in his memory a date which I might have occasion to remind him of at some future day."
"That is true, monsieur," said M. de Mornand, "but that affair has not the slightest connection with the explanation I just demanded of you."
"On the contrary, monsieur, this explanation is the natural consequence of that affair."
"Be more explicit, if you please, monsieur."
"I will. At that entertainment at the house of Madame de Senneterre, in the garden, under a clump of lilacs, in the presence of several gentlemen, and notably M. de Morainville and M. d'Hauterive here, you had the audacity to calumniate Madame la Comtesse de Beaumesnil in the most shameless manner."
"Monsieur!"
"Without either compassion or consideration for an unfortunate lady who was then lying at the point of death," continued the hunchback, interrupting M. de Mornand, indignantly, "you insulted her in the most cowardly manner and even went so far as to say that no honourable man would ever marry the daughter of such a mother as Madame de Beaumesnil."