"You shall have them, monsieur. Do you wish me to call the master-cook?"
"No, I do not like to order my repasts, and, however clean and neat the kitchen people may be, they always smell of the kitchen. Help me to plan——"
"What knife is that?" said Mario, very earnestly, as the marquis, always good-humored and momentarily preoccupied, held him between his legs and allowed him to ransack his pockets.
"Nothing, nothing," said the marquis, trying to recover the pledge that Lauriane had given him. "Give it back to me, my boy; children must not touch such things. They bite, you see! Give it to me!"
"Yes, yes, here it is!" said Mario; "but I saw what was written on it, and I know whose it is."
"You don't know what you are saying!"
"Yes, I do; I say that it belongs to the Spanish gentleman you call Villareal. Did he give it to you?"
"Come, come, what is this you are muttering? You are dreaming!"
"No, kind monsieur! I saw the device on the blade. It is in Spanish, and I know it very well; my mother Mercedes has one just like it, with the same device."
"What does the device mean?"