the point."

"You bolt from my words," he retorted, "like a shy mare on the curb;
you take insult like a donkey on a well-wheel. What fly will the English
fish rise to? Now it no more plays to my hook than an August chub."

I could not help but admire his spirit and the sharpness of his speech,
though it drew me into a deeper quandary. It was clear that he would
not be tempered to friendliness; for, as is often so, when men have said
things fiercely, their eloquence feeds their passion and convinces them
of holiness in their cause. Calmly, but with a heavy heart, I answered:

"I wish not to find offense in your words, my friend, for in some good
days gone you and I had good acquaintance, and I can not forget that the
last hours of a light imprisonment before I entered on a dark one were
spent in the home of your father--of the brave Seigneur whose life I
once saved."

I am sure I should not have mentioned this in any other situation--it
seemed as if I were throwing myself on his mercy; but yet I felt it was
the only thing to do--that I must bridge this affair, if at cost of some
reputation.

It was not to be. Here Doltaire, seeing that my words had indeed
affected my opponent, said: "A double retreat! He swore to give a
challenge to-night, and he cries off like a sheep from a porcupine; his
courage is so slack, he dares not move a step to his liberty. It was a
bet, a hazard. He was to drink glass for glass with any and all of us,
and fight sword for sword with any of us who gave him cause. Having
drunk his courage to death, he'd now browse at the feet of those who
give him chance to win his stake."

His words came slowly and bitingly, yet with an air of damnable
nonchalance. I looked round me. Every man present was full-sprung with
wine; and a distance away, a gentleman on either side of him, stood the
Intendant, smiling detestably, a keen, houndlike look shooting out of
his small round eyes.

I had had enough; I could bear no more. To be baited like a bear by
these Frenchmen--it was aloes in my teeth! I was not sorry then that
these words of Juste Duvarney's gave me no chance of escape from
fighting; though I would it had been any other man in the room than
he. It was on my tongue to say that if some gentleman would take up his
quarrel I should be glad to drive mine home, though for reasons I cared
not myself to fight Duvarney. But I did not, for I knew that to carry
that point farther might rouse a general tho