"Ay, but he does not come to Ruffigny," replied the Chevalier. "He goes to Poitiers. I know all about his movements; and I'll tell you what, Morseiul: take care how you go to visit him at Poitiers, for you might chance not to come back unscathed."
"How so?" demanded the Count, turning sharply as if with some surprise. "Is there any thing new against us poor Huguenots?"
"Poo, I spoke not of that," replied the Chevalier. "You sectarians seem to have a sort of hereditary feeling of martyrdom in you, as if your chief ancestor had been St. Bartholomew himself, and the saint, being skinned alive, had given the world a skinless posterity, which makes them all feel alarmed lest any one should touch them."
"It is an ominous name, St. Bartholomew, you must acknowledge to the ears of a Huguenot," replied the Count. "But what is it I have to fear, if not that, Louis?"
"What is it you have to fear!" rejoined the Chevalier. "Why, a pair of the brightest eyes in all France--I believe I might say in all Europe."
The Count shook his head with a smile.
"Well then," continued the Chevalier, "a pair of lips that look like twin roses; eyebrows that give a meaning to every lustrous look of the eyes; a hand small, white, and delicate, with fingers tapering and rounded like those with which the Venus of the Greeks gathers around her timid form the unwilling drapery; a foot such as no sandle-shod goddess of the golden age could match: and a form which would have left the sculptor nothing to seek in other beauties but herself."
The Count laughed aloud. "I am quite safe," he said, "quite safe, Louis, quite safe. I have nothing on earth to fear."
"Indeed!" exclaimed his companion, in the same gay tone. "Pray, what panoply of proof do you possess sufficient to resist such arms as these when brought against you?"
"Mine is twofold," answered the Count. "In the first place, your own enthusiasm cannot be misunderstood, and, of course, I do not become the rival of my friend. Our great hero, Condé, has set all soldiers a better example."