His behaviour was the ignoble spite of the man who believed he saw in the other the son of him who had consistently ignored his existence—the late Duc de Vannes.
"The explanation," he said, in answer to St Georges's remark, and speaking in a voice which he endeavoured to render cold and haughty, but which was, in truth, an angry, bitter one, "will have to be very full, very complete, to satisfy his Majesty. You quitted the garrison of Pontarlier on the last night of the last year, riding on special service in the king's name, and you have tarried long on the road in, I imagine, your own service. Beyond bringing one message—that from the Bishop of Lodève—you have failed in your duty, sir; indeed, failed so much that the Marquise de Roquemaure, from whom you were ordered to bring another message, has actually preceded your arrival here. Has passed you on the road and entered Paris before you, though you quitted her manoir before she did; has, indeed, been able to give an interesting account of you and your supposed adventures."
"Supposed!" exclaimed St. Georges quietly—"supposed! Does madame la marquise stigmatize them as 'supposed,' or does monsieur le ministre, Monsieur de Louvois, apply that epithet to them?" and as he spoke, with still his head thrown back and his left hand resting lightly in the cup of his sword hilt, he looked very straight into the eyes of Louvois.
"Madame la marquise is a woman; she believes—and tells—a story as she hears it."
St. Georges bent his head for a moment, then as quietly as he asked the previous question, but equally as clearly and distinctly as he had previously spoken, he said:
"Monsieur Louvois will remember he is speaking to a soldier."
"Et puis?"
"Who permits no one, not even the minister of the army, who is his superior, to question his veracity. What he told madame he told as it happened."
Louvois laughed somewhat sinisterly and wholly insultingly, yet for him quietly, after which he said:
"Monsieur St. Georges is also something else besides a soldier—as, indeed, his present manner proclaims. A little of—if I may say it without fear of being done to death on my own hearth—a bully."