"Who, pray, does the marquis the honor to repeat his absurd boasts?" he said. "Does madame your wife deign to know him?"
"It would seem so!" retorted Macabre, "and I know, also, my old rascal, that you are that triple hound of a false marquis's humble servant, and that he taught you how to cook; but I don't care a straw! You are watched and your ears will answer to me for your ragouts."
The marquis saw that he had no other resource than to speak ill of himself, and he did not spare himself, ridiculing his own rank and character in most amusing terms; but he could not decide to couple with his accursed and calumniated name the epithet old, which his contemporary Macabre insolently used to decry him.
The captain persisted in a most offensive way.
"That old dyspeptic must be pretty well broken up," he said, "for when I saw him last he was like a long lath, with no beard on his chin, and I nearly broke him in two by mistake."
"Indeed?" said Bois-Doré, recalling the youthful adventure which he had recently related to Adamas; "did you do him the honor of measuring swords with him?"
"No, my good man, I didn't stoop to that. He was on horseback, carrying munitions of war to our enemies. I took him by one leg and, stretching him at my feet, I left him for dead and seized his convoy."
"Which consisted of powder and ball?" queried Bois-Doré, unable to refrain from laughing inwardly at the absurd boasting of the man whom he had overturned with a kick, and at the remembrance of that famous stock of munitions of war, consisting of children's toys.
"It was a good capture!" replied the captain. "But we have talked enough, old jabberer! Go downstairs and have an eye to everything."
Bois-Doré, relegated to his ovens, was compelled to leave Mario, whom the captain detained.