"Answer, O marvellous queen of Paphos and Cythera! Will you accept me for your champion in the combat which I beg the privilege of undertaking for you? Give me a pledge—the merest trifle—your glove; you have none? then your pretty hand, that I may kiss it; and I am victor!"
Miretta stared in utter amazement at that tall man, thin as an asparagus stalk, who was almost kneeling at her horse's tail; she seemed not at all inclined to accept him for her knight, for ugliness inspires women with little confidence, and the Chevalier Passedix was perfectly ugly.
But the Béarnais peasant, still twirling his staff, said to the Gascon:
"Thanks for your offer, seigneur cavalier; it isn't to be refused.—Here are I don't know how many of them setting on me, and I am all alone to defend my travelling companion! My opinion is that it's a cowardly trick! But come and take my side, and I'll warrant that with my club and your spit we'll prevent these gentry from carrying off Miretta."
Although he considered the term spit in very bad taste as applied to Roland, the valorous Passedix, whom Miretta's eyes had already taken captive, instantly took his stand in front of the horse, threatening the assailants with his sword.
While these things were taking place about the travellers, Master Hugonnet and his daughter, having learned the subject of the quarrel, were striving to make the reckless youths drawn up in battle array in front of the shop listen to reason. But that which at first was a simple jest had become, in the eyes of those young dandies, a matter of self-esteem, almost of honor. No one of them was willing to give ground before Cédrille's staff. In order that the dispute should come to an end without violence, it would have been necessary for the peasant to agree to apologize to those who had jeered at him and insulted him, and he was in no mood to humble himself before them.
"By Notre-Dame! messeigneurs," said Hugonnet, going from one to another of his customers, with his basin of soapsuds in one hand and his shaving brush in the other, "what have this peasant and his companion done to you that you should pick a quarrel with them? What an idea—to throw a whole quarter into commotion and bring the whole neighborhood to the windows, for two travellers who have only one horse between them!"
"Leave us in peace, Hugonnet; attend to your own affairs; this doesn't concern you!"
"Pardieu! yes, it does concern me; for you are blocking the whole street, you are in battle order in front of my house, so that it would be impossible for anyone to come near who might happen to want a bath or a shave! So you see that you injure me with your quarrelling, and that it does concern me."
"For heaven's sake, messieurs," said Ambroisine, in her turn, "do not torment this poor traveller like this! What pleasure can you find in frightening a woman? Let these people go their way. They are not Parisians—anyone can see that! They do not know that you are only threatening them in joke."