'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.
'If you don't, no one else does,' I answered. 'So that is settled. Landlord, some more wine.'
He was very sulky with me for a while, fingering his glass in silence and scowling at the table. He had enough gentility to feel the humiliation to which he had exposed himself, and a sufficiency of wit to understand that that moment's hesitation had cost him the allegiance of his fellow-ruffians. I hastened, therefore, to set him at his ease by explaining my plans for the night, and presently succeeded beyond my hopes; for when he heard who the lady was whom I proposed to carry off, and that she was lying that evening at the Château de Chizé, his surprise swept away the last trace of resentment. He stared at me as at a maniac.
'Mon Dieu!' he exclaimed. 'Do you know what you are doing, Sieur?'
'I think so,' I answered.