“Not one single thing—not one single solitary thing—!”
“The sentiment is strong if the grammar is bad,” interrupted Fournel, meaning to wound wherever he found an opportunity, for the Seigneur’s deformity excited in him no pity; it rather incensed him against the man, as an affront to decency and to his own just claims to the honours the Frenchman enjoyed. It was a petty resentment, but George Fournel had set his heart upon playing the grand-seigneur over the Frenchmen of Pontiac, and of ultimately leaving his fortune to the parish, if they all fell down and worshipped him and his “golden calf.”
“The grammar is suitable to the case,” retorted the Seigneur, his voice rising. “Everything is mine by law, and everything I will keep. If you think different, produce a will—produce a will!”
Truth was, Louis Racine would rather have parted with the Seigneury itself than with these relics asked for. They were reminiscent of the time when France and her golden-lilies brooded over his land, of the days when Louis Quatorze was king. He cherished everything that had association with the days of the old regime, as a miner hugs his gold, or a woman her jewels. The request to give them up to this unsympathetic Englishman, who valued them because they had belonged to his friend the late Seigneur, only exasperated him.
“I am ready to pay the highest possible price for them, as I have said,” urged the Englishman, realising as he spoke that it was futile to urge the sale upon that basis.
“Money cannot buy the things that Frenchmen love. We are not a race of hucksters,” retorted the Seigneur.
“That accounts for your envious dispositions then. You can’t buy what you want—you love such curious things, I assume. So you play the dog in the manger, and won’t let other decent folk buy what they want.” He wilfully distorted the other’s meaning, and was delighted to see the Seigneur’s fingers twitch with fury. “But since you can’t buy the things you love—and you seem to think you should—how do you get them? Do you come by them honestly? or do you work miracles? When a spider makes love to his lady he dances before her to infatuate her, and then in a moment of her delighted aberration snatches at her affections. Is it the way of the spider then?”
With a snarl as of a wild beast, Louis Racine sprang forward and struck Fournel in the face with his clinched fist. Then, as Fournel, blinded, staggered back upon the book-shelves, he snatched two antique swords from the wall. Throwing one on the floor in front of the Englishman, he ran to the door and locked it, and turned round, the sword grasped firmly in his hand, and white with rage.
“Spider! Spider! By Heaven, you shall have the spider dance before you!” he said hoarsely. He had mistaken Fournel’s meaning. He had put the most horrible construction upon it. He thought that Fournel referred to his deformity, and had ruthlessly dragged in Madelinette as well.
He was like a being distraught. His long brown hair was tossed over his blanched forehead and piercing black eyes. His head was thrown forward even more than his deformity compelled, his white teeth showed in a grimace of hatred; he was half-crouched, like an animal ready to spring.