"I am sorry for the blow, sir; but was the fault all mine?"
"The fault? Is that the question? Faults and manners are not the same.
At bottom you lack in manners; and that will ruin you at last."
"You slighted my mother!"
"Oh, no! and if I had, you should not have seen it."
"I am not used to swallow insults. It is your way, sir. I know your dealings with my father."
"A little more brandy, please. But your father had manners, after all. You are as rash as he; and in essential matters clownish—which he was not."
Gaston was well in hand now, cooler even than his uncle.
"Perhaps you will sum up your criticism now, sir, to save future explanation; and then accept my apology."
"To apologise for what no gentleman pardons or does, or acknowledges openly when done—H'm! Were it not well to pause in time, and go back to your wild North? Why so difficult a saddle—Tartarin after Napoleon? Think—Tartarin's end!"
Gaston deprecated with a gesture: "Can I do anything for you, sir?"