“I would say, sire, without making a boast of it, that I have found none of your Breton men a match for me in arms.”
Bertrand heard the words as a man who is half asleep hears a voice that wakes him in the morning. Croquart had been telling a few of his adventures, poking the fire with his stick and brandishing it like the baton of a master musician marshalling the lutanists and flute-players at a feast. The vanity of the Fleming was so inevitable a characteristic that one was no more surprised by it than by seeing a toad spit. Innocent egoism may be a delicate perfume, an essence that adds to the charm of the individual, admirably so in women when they are deserving of desire. But with Croquart his intemperate arrogance was a veritable stench, an effluvium of the flesh, a carrion conceit that nauseated and repelled.
To Bertrand, Tiphaïne’s face seemed tilted antagonistically towards the moon. Her throat lengthened, her lids drooped more over her eyes. She looked impatient over the bellowings of this bull. Tinteniac leaned on his elbow and watched the fire. His contempt, deep as it was, found no expression on his face.
“You cut a notch on your spear,” he said, “for every gentleman you have beaten in arms.”
Croquart prodded the embers with his stick.
“I have cut twenty notches, sire, already.”
“You will have no wood left to your spear soon, eh?”
“Room for more yet,” and he laughed. “I will tell you the names: Sir John de Montigny, Sir Aymery de la Barre, Geoffroi Dubois, Sir Gringoir of Angers, Lord Thomas Allison, whom I challenged at Brest—” And he ran on, mouthing the syllables with the air of a gourmet recalling the dishes at some great feast.
Tiphaïne drew her cloak about her as though she felt the cold.
“And to-day, sir, you have cut another notch,” she said.