“Pistols.”
“As you will,” said the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders. “You are my principal, and I see zat your honneur is satisfy. I go then to see ze friend of M’sieu le Conte, and to make all ze preparations for to cross to Belgium; but, my faith, my dear Dale, it is very awkward: I have not ze small shange for all ze preliminary. May I ask you to be my banker?”
“Yes, of course. I ought to have thought,” said Armstrong.
He went to his desk and took out the necessary sum, passed it to the voluble little Frenchman, who rose, shook him by both hands, looked at him with tears in his eyes, told him he was proud of him, and then hurried off with his head erect his hat slightly cocked, and his eyes now sparkling with excitement.
“Step ze first to be in ordaire; whom shall ve ’ave for ze ozaire seconde?”
He frowned severely and walked on a few yards, looking very thoughtful. Then the idea came.
“Of course: Shoe Pacey. He vill be proud to go viz me to meet ze ozaire secondes.”
Leronde had been in the lowest of low spirits that morning. The news from Paris had been most disastrous for gentlemen of communistic principles, who, in spite of crying “Vive la Commune!” saw the unfortunate idol of their lives withering and dying daily. Money, too, had been very “shorts,” as he called it, and he had gone to Armstrong Dale’s in the most despondent manner. But now all that was altered. He had money in his purse, and walked as if on air. There was no opportunity for following the tracks of either “la gloire, or l’amour;” but here was “l’honneur,” the other person of a Frenchman’s trinity, calling him to the front; and on the strength of the funds in hand, he entered the first tobacconist’s, bought a whole ninepenny packet of cigarettes, and then smoked in triumph all the way to Pacey’s lodgings.
This gentleman was growling over a notice of the Old Masters’ Exhibition which he had written for a morning paper, and with which, to use his own words, “the humbug of an editor had taken confounded liberties.”
“Hallo! Signor Barricado, what’s up? Republic gone to the dogs?”