"Tut, tut, mon cher Duc," I mildly interjected, "I come as a service to you, one of my oldest friends."
"I need no service, madame."
"You need great service, mon enfant," I retorted, reprovingly, for my twenty-seven years afforded me vast superiority over his twenty-five. "You need great service. What is this foolish escapade of abducting the representative of England, and compelling him to fight a duel in your own park before he regains his freedom? What is—"
"It is an affair of my own, madame," he interrupted.
"An affair of your own," I cried, with a suspicion of anger in my tones. "It is an affair of the nation, of France, when you lure an Englishman, an Ambassador, to your house, and force him into a duel."
"I force him to nothing," he said, as we walked aside. "He has been my guest—"
"Tut! Paris knows he has disappeared; you lured him away, and you now hold him a prisoner here until he fights this duel, n'est ce pas?"
"I do not contradict. I but defend my honor; Sir Edward Rivington spoke of me indiscreetly. He alluded to me before my friends as a mere boy; he ridiculed my duels, laughed at our code of honor, mocked at what he described the satisfaction of a scratch, and scoffed as only an Englishman can. A man who has never stood before the sword of his enemy. I challenged him; he laughed, and turned aside with the sneer that Englishmen had neither time nor inclination for such pleasantries. He spoke of his duty to his own country, and, in a word, covered himself with the invulnerability of his official position. He, at the Embassy, was in England, not in France. I removed him from his Embassy. In the grounds of my chateau he is in France, and not in England. In France, where a man avenges insults with his sword."
"Excellent! But if you wound him?"
"Be assured, madame, I shall not. I shall not wound him, nor shall he touch me, but he shall learn that duelling in France is not child's play. I will tire him until he realizes that, and then disarm him; and my sense of honor will be satisfied when he finds his ridicule recoils upon himself."