"Very good."
"Your hour?"
"Whenever you choose."
"To-morrow morning at eight o'clock, on the plain of Maso, if that is agreeable to you. These gentlemen will be my seconds."
"Very good, signor; my friend here will be mine."
Hector glanced at me with a disdainful smile, and, leading Nasi aside, with his two companions, said to him:
"Come, come, my dear count, allow me to tell you that this is carrying the jest too far. Now that it has come to a question of fighting, we should be serious for a moment, it seems to me. My seconds are gentlemen of rank: the Marquis de Mazzorbo and Signor de Monteverbasco. I am sure that you would not associate with them, as your second, this person to whom I ordered my servant to give twenty francs the other day for tuning a piano at my mother's house. Really, I cannot stand such a thing. Yesterday, we discovered that this person has an intrigue with my cousin, and to-day you tell us that he is your intimate friend. Be good enough at least to tell us his name."
"You are utterly mistaken, signor count. This person, as you call him, does not tune pianos, and has never set foot in your mother's house. He is Signor Lelio, one of our greatest artists, and one of the best and most honorable men whom I know."
I had overheard indistinctly the beginning of this conversation, and, finding that I was the subject of discussion, had walked rapidly toward the group. When I heard Count Hector speak bluntly of an intrigue with Alezia, the dissatisfaction which I felt because the battle was being fought without me changed to indignation, and I determined to make some one of our adversaries pay for the falseness of my position. I could not vent my spleen on Count Hector, who had already been insulted by Nasi; so it was upon Signor de Monteverbasco that the storm fell. That worthy squire, on learning my name had said simply, with an air of amazement:
"The deuce!"