."

"I will denounce you."

"Is it not a joke?"

"What?"

"That you will tell the king after your nap."

"Not at all. You see, my dear friend," said Chicot, half raising his
head, "you are a conspirator, and I am a spy; you have a plot, and I
denounce you; we each follow our business."

And Chicot laid his head down again, so that his face was completely
hidden by his hands, while the back of his head was protected by his
helmet.

"Ah!" cried Borromee, "you will denounce me when you wake!" and, rising,
he made a furious blow with his dagger on the back of his companion,
thinking to pierce him through and nail him to the table. But he had not
reckoned on the shirt of mail which Chicot had carried away from the
priory. The dagger broke upon it like glass, and for the second time
Chicot owed his life to it.

Before Borromee had time to recover from his astonishment, Chicot's
right fist struck him a heavy blow in the face, and sent him bleeding
and stunned against the wall.

In a minute, however, he was up, and sword in hand; but this minute had
sufficed for Chicot to draw his sword also, and prepare himself. He
seemed to shake off, as if by enchantment, all the fumes of the wine,
and stood with a steady hand to receive his adversary. The table, like a
field of battle, covered with empty bottles, lay between them, but the
blood flowing down his face infuriated Borromee, who lunged at his
adversary as fiercely as the intervening table permitted.

"Dolt!" cried Chicot, "you see that it is decidedly you who are drunk,
for you cannot reach me across the table, while my arm is six inches
longer than yours, and my sword as much longer than your sword; and here
is the proof."

As he spoke, he stretched out his arm and wounded Borromee in the
forehead. Borromee uttered a cry, still more of rage than of pain, and
as he was brave enough, attacked with double fury.

Chicot, however, still on the other side of the table, took a chair and
sat down, saying, "Mon Dieu! how stupid these soldiers are; they pretend
to know how to manage their swords, and any bourgeois, if he liked,
could kill them like flies. Ah! now you want to put out my eye. And now
you mount on the table; but, ventre de biche! take care, donkey." And he
pricked him with his sword in the stomach, as he had already done in the
forehead.

Borromee roared with anger and leaped from the table to the floor.

"That is as it should, be," said Chicot; "now we a