ing
out; then it came:

"I didn't know that, nor the half of it; how could I? I've been an idiot.
I see it now--I've been an idiot. I met them this morning, and sung out
hello to them just as I would to anybody. I didn't mean to be
ill-mannered, but I didn't know the half of this that you've been
telling. I've been an ass. Yes, that is all there is to it--I've been an
ass."

Noel Rainguesson said, in a kind of weary way:

"Yes, that is likely enough; but I don't see why you should seem
surprised at it."

"You don't, don't you? Well, why don't you?"

"Because I don't see any novelty about it. With some people it is a
condition which is present all the time. Now you take a condition which
is present all the time, and the results of that condition will be
uniform; this uniformity of result will in time become monotonous;
monotonousness, by the law of its being, is fatiguing. If you had
manifested fatigue upon noticing that you had been an ass, that would
have been logical, that would have been rational; whereas it seems to me
that to manifest surprise was to be again an ass, because the condition
of intellect that can enable a person to be surprised and stirred by
inert monotonousness is a--"

"Now that is enough, Noel Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get
yourself into trouble. And don't bother me any more for some days or a
week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack."

"Come, I like that! I didn't want to talk. I tried to get out of talking.
If you didn't want to hear my clack, what did you keep intruding your
conversation on me for?"

"I? I never dreamed of such a thing."

"Well, you did it, anyway. And I have a right to feel hurt, and I do feel
hurt, to have you treat me so. It seems to me that when a person goads,
and crowds, and in a manner forces another person to talk, it is neither
very fair nor very good-mannered to call what he says clack."

"Oh, snuffle--do! and break your heart, you poor thing. Somebody fetch
this sick doll a sugar-rag. Look you, Sir Jean de Metz, do you feel
absolutely certain about that thing?"

"What thing?"

"Why, that Jean and Pierre are going to take precedence of all the lay
noblesse hereabouts except the Duke d'Alencon?"

"I think there is not a doubt of it."

The Standard-Bearer was deep in thoughts and dreams a few moments, then
the silk-and-velvet expanse of his vast breast rose and fell with a sigh,
and he said:

"Dear, dear, what a lift it