"Why, monsieur le comte, because I flatter myself that I should be more fortunate than poor Léodgard! And that infernal knave would receive at my hand the reward of his brigandage! I would give myself the pleasure of burying six inches of Roland in his throat. Ah! sandioux! I can see from here the wry face he would make!—Does that make you laugh, Monsieur de Carvajal?"
"Why, yes, because it occurs to me, too, that in such a battle as you suggest one of the two would, in fact, be likely to cause the other to make a strange grimace."
"One of the two! Do you doubt that I should triumph?"
"I in no wise doubt your valor, monsieur le chevalier; but as for your triumph, permit me to think that it is better not to make any assertions beforehand—the most valiant are conquered sometimes; fortune is capricious to fighting men as well as to lovers."
Passedix bit his lips and drew his eyebrows together. The hostess, who had decided to remove the shells from her eggs, said to the tenant of her first floor:
"In any case, monsieur le comte, it is always prudent not to go out at night unless you are well armed; for my part, I don't dare to go to the theatre at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, because it ends too late! It's half-past eight sometimes when they finish the beautiful tragedy of Sophonisbé, by Monsieur Mairet, which I would have liked to see, all the same!"
"Sophonisbé! Faith! I prefer his last tragedy, the Duc d'Ossone—the verses are more sonorous, the subject more warlike.—What say you, monsieur le comte?"
"I do not go to the play."
"Where in the devil does the Spaniard go?" thought Passedix, draping himself in his cloak; "never to the court, never to a wine shop, never to the play! He wants to make us think that he's always shut up with some petticoat!"
And the Gascon swayed to and fro on his chair and caressed his chin, as he continued: