"I come full of these glorious plans of benevolence which might well ennoble any man, and find—hey, presto! the romance has turned the other way! My colonel still lives, being conjured back to life by undiluted fidelity; the lawyer with the knotty head has argued the plague out of conceit of him, and the glorious mademoiselle is a fiancee; so I bury my too fond plans for mademoiselle's welfare, and I crucify the flesh, and say to myself:
"'I will be the good fairy for these two people; will be the mason to build the steps to their summit of bliss; I will be the porter to carry them thence.'
"So I fly to you—behold me—I am here to act as manager—I glow with the eagerness of friendship."
"And in return, what do you expect?"
Calembours shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
"Vive l'Anglais!" he cried, "they can make a good bull's-eye can the John Bulls. You see this bourse? Bah! how wrinkled are its sides, how flattened under hard pressure of poverty! Mon Dieu! did not the jade, Madame Hesslein, take the bread out of my mouth in the amplitude of her revenge? Very well. You who offer me the hand of friendship in return for that leetle favor, and also for the other not leetle favor of sending your Marguerite to save your life, shall take her fingers in yours, kiss them, and say: "Have you forgotten the small souvenir which you promised to my friend, the chevalier?" Ma Mignonette, now is the time to remember it. And she will remember it—my word upon it, she will, and will also urge upon you to let her souvenir me with a leetle more of her pin-money. And with the proceeds of your joint munificence I shall float again on the ascending tide of fortune, in my tight little bark, in spite of the grande she devil who has ruined me."
"Ah, your funds have run low, and you are here to replenish them?"
"By gar! that is so, mon ami."
The two men eyed each other; St Udo with raised eyebrows and slightly scornful amusement; the ex-tailor of Szegedin with an ingratiating impudence which showed that monsieur knew his man very well.
"I have told you often that you are a greedy dog," said the colonel; "but I have no wish to see you under the feet of your favourite goddess, though I had much rather you had left your services to speak for themselves to our pockets. How much did Miss Walsingham agree to give you? Davenport, it seems to me, mentioned something of this to me."