I looked at him steadily, and replied with bitter but calm contempt—
“Perfectly well, Monsieur G—. And very little did I suppose that I should ever see it again. I imagined, sir, that you were in your proper place,—the galleys!”
It was wrong, doubtless, in me so to answer him—unfeminine, perhaps, and too provocative of insult; but the blood of my race is hot, and vehement to repel insult; and when I thought of the sufferings I had endured, the trials I had encountered, and the contumely which I had borne on account of that man, my every vein seemed to overflow with passion.
“Ha!” he replied, grinding his teeth with rage, and becoming crimson from the rush of blood to his head, while he grasped my wrist hard with his hand, and shook it furiously. “Ha! to the galleys yourself—Chienne! Ingrate! Perfide! Traitresse! c’est aux galères que j’ai cru te rencontrer—ou plutot à la—”
What further atrocity the ruffian was about to utter, I know not, for while his odious voice was yet hissing in my ear these atrocious epithets, before the footman who was standing, as I have said, a few yards off at the other
side of the carriage, had time to interfere, I heard the sound of a horse at full gallop, and, the next instant, he was dragged forcibly away, and I saw him quivering in the furious grasp of the Count de Chavannes, who had, it seems, been returning to join us, when the assault was committed.
To gallop to my side, to spring to the ground, to collar the ruffian, drag him from the carriage, and lash him with his whole strength with a rough jockey whip till he fairly screamed for mercy, were but the work of a moment.
And I could not but marvel afterwards to think how much power and nervous energy his indignant spirit had lent to his slight frame and slender limbs; for in size, he was by no means superior to G—, whom he nevertheless handled almost as if he had been a child of five years old.
Want of breath at last, rather than want of will, compelled him to pause in his exercise; and then turning towards us with an air as composed and smiling as if he had been merely dancing a quadrille, he took off his hat, saying:—