I had to make a similar confession, but, as I hope, in a purer idiom.
“Muy bien,” said this distinguished French gentleman, speaking in a very tolerable Spanish that put the Count of Nullepart’s to shame and compared not unfavourably with my own, “Very well, my friends, a word in your ears. Your conduct is worthy of the highest censure, but the gentlemen of the King’s Guard are not accustomed to turn their hands against the canaille. All the same, they pray you to have a care.”
Thus having spoken with a degree of insolent contempt that few could have equalled, this Frenchman, and I am sure among his own nation he must have taken rank as a great lord, turned his back upon us with a high degree of disdain, and proceeded to regard Sir Richard Pendragon. The English giant met him with a sleepy indifference. Thereupon the Frenchman lowered his gaze to an amused contempt, and withdrew Sir Richard Pendragon’s sword from the floor.
After examining this weapon with a care that was only half curious he gave his shoulders a shrug, after the foreign manner, and then presented it to the Englishman by the hilt, saying, “Put up your butter-cutter, Monsieur l’Epicier, and when you return into your peninsula give an additional alms to the Virgin that you find yourself with as whole a skin as that with which you went.”
Being addressed in this fashion, an odd change fell upon the Englishman. As in the affair in the inn at Madrid, a kind of sinister softness overtook him. Immediately he abated his voice into a modest and humble accent which was quite unlike his previous immoderation.
“I thank you, good Frenchman, for my poor tuck. It is an ancient arm, I might say an heirloom; yet once on a day it held the rank of a sword. At least, in that capacity was it given to an elderly forebear by Edward the Black Prince, who in his day did some pretty work among the French. And now, as you say, although it is an old thing, it still serves to cut butter.”
Thereupon, in the presence of the whole room, which had suspended its affairs entirely, Sir Richard Pendragon quietly laid the flat part of the sword against one side of the Frenchman’s cheek and then against the other.
CHAPTER XXV
OF SIR RICHARD PENDRAGON’S DUELLO WITH THE GALLANT FRENCHMAN
Any excitement that was likely to arise was checked by the Frenchman’s action. With a dark and cold smile on his lips, he turned to his friends and held up a slender white hand that was covered with jewels, and besought them, almost in a tone of entreaty, to display calmness.
Then with a most courteous apology to all who had suspended their play, and remarking that it was plaguy unfortunate that he must suspend his own when the cards had smiled upon him for the first time in a long season, he ordered the landlord to have all the room’s furniture drawn close to the wall.