‘You,’ I answered unmoved, helping myself, as I spoke, from the roll of black bread which lay beside me. ‘You robbed me this afternoon; I passed it over. You encouraged those men to be insolent; I passed it over. But let me tell you this. If you fail me to-night, on the honour of a gentleman, M. Fresnoy, I will run you through as I would spit a lark.’
‘Will you? But two can play at that game,’ he cried, rising nimbly from his stool. ‘Still better six! Don’t you think, M. de Marsac, you had better have waited—?’
‘I think you had better hear one word more,’ I answered coolly, keeping my seat, ‘before you appeal to your fellows there.’
‘Well,’ he said, still standing, ‘what is it?’
‘Nay,’ I replied, after once more pointing to his stool in vain, ‘if you prefer to take my orders standing, well and good.’
‘Your orders?’ he shrieked, growing suddenly excited.
‘Yes, my orders!’ I retorted, rising as suddenly to my feet and hitching forward my sword. ‘My orders, sir,’ I repeated fiercely, ‘or, if you dispute my right to command as well as to pay this party, let us decide the question here and now—you and I, foot to foot, M. Fresnoy.’
The quarrel flashed up so suddenly, though I had been preparing it all along, that no one moved. The woman indeed, fell back to her children, but the rest looked on open-mouthed. Had they stirred, or had a moment’s hurly-burly heated his blood, I doubt not Fresnoy would have taken up my challenge, for he did not lack hardihood. But as it was, face to face with me in the silence, his courage failed him. He paused, glowering at me uncertainly, and did not speak.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘don’t you think that if I pay I ought to give orders, sir?’
‘Who wishes to oppose your orders?’ he muttered, drinking off a bumper, and sitting down with an air of impudent bravado, assumed to hide his discomfiture.