Monsieur le Géneral looked at me again, keenly.
“We may not agree upon definitions.”
“My definitions are from the book of real life, Monsieur le Géneral. They are always in agreement with the truth. Monsieur knows, though, that he may trust me for himself, however my definitions may differ from his own. He has not forgotten that I saved his life once from an English sword. I know the memory is graven upon the mind of Monsieur le Géneral as deeply as the scar is cut in my arm.”
“I think you love me, Pierre,” he replied.
I laid my hand on my heart, bowing till my head almost touched one of the crimson roses in the velvet of Monsieur’s carpet.
“More than my life, Monsieur.”
What could I say fairer than that, for was not life the dearest thing to me then?
So matters stood with my lord and me on that morning when he sent me with a missive to Mademoiselle Denise. To her or to another, what mattered it to me? They were all young demoiselles and, as such, of far less consequence than the silver mounting of my lord’s pistols or the flash of his gold-sheathed sword.
As I crossed the courtyard a dark-eyed page, idling by the fountain that sparkled in the sun, was singing:
“By the garden-wall the rose blooms red,