"My mistress! that's my gun," said Létorière, stretching himself out by the fire, and poking it with the toe of his great boot, the soles of which were an inch thick. "Devil take the women! they cannot bear the smell of tobacco, of brandy, or of the kennel, without putting a flask of perfume to their noses. Do you make much account of women, baron?"
"I love better to hear the clatter of spurs than the rustle of petticoats, my guest; but at my age that is wisdom," said the baron, more and more astonished to find the Marquis sharing his rustic tastes and his antipathies to the ridiculous affectations of the fair sex.
"At all ages it is wisdom, baron; and I would give all the love-sick guitars, all the melancholy lays of the troubadours, for the old trumpet of a forester."
"Do you know one thing, my guest?" said the baron, striking his mug against that of the Marquis.
"Say on, baron," replied the Marquis, filling his pipe anew.
"Well! before I saw you, knowing you were coming to interest me about your lawsuit, which unhappily . . .
"Devil take the lawsuit, baron!" cried Létorière; "the one who speaks of it this evening shall be condemned to drink a pint of water!"
"So be it, Marquis! Well, before I saw you it seemed to me that I should much rather go through a bramble bush than to receive you; frankly, I dreaded your arrival. . . . I believed you a dandy and a beau." . . .
"Thank you, baron! Well, for my part, I believed you to be an Alcindor, a Cytherean shepherd."
"Now, although I have known you but this evening," resumed the baron, "I will say to you frankly, that when you quit this poor castle of Henferester I shall have lost the best companion that a man could have for a long evening at the fire-side."