"Let love reign until to-morrow! And until then, a sweet kiss, my Vagress!"
The Master of the Hounds received the kiss, while his neighbor, grave like a man half-seas over, said in a magisterial voice:
"Brothers, I have an idea—"
"Your idea, Symphorien, seems to be to drain that amphora to the very bottom."
"Yes, to begin with—and then to prove to you—logice and a priori—"
"To the devil with your Roman tongue!"
"Brothers, not because one is a Vagre does it follow that he can not be versed in letters and philosophy. I used to teach rhetoric to the young clerks of the Bishop of Limoges. I received a call from the Bishop of Tulle for the same office. As I was crossing the Jargeaux mountains on the way from the one town to the other, I was captured in the woods by a band of bad Vagres—there are good and bad Vagres. And those Vagres sold me to a slave merchant, and he sold me again to the bishop of—"
"The devil take this rhetorician! Look at him traveling up hills and down dales."
"Such is frequently the effect of rhetoric. It carries one across the plains of imagination. But let me return to what I wanted to prove to you logice—it is this: We need not worry ourselves over the leudes nor any other armed bands that might be in pursuit of us, because, logice—the Lord God will perform a miracle in our favor to disengage us of our enemies."
"A miracle in favor of us, Vagres? Are we, perchance, on such good terms with heaven?"