y with much bitterness. But in that
hour I knew no reason. I was mad, and of my madness was born this harsh
brutality.

"You would talk of me and my affairs in a tavern, you hound!" I cried,
out of breath both by virtue of my passion and my exertions. "Let the
memory of this act as a curb upon your poisonous tongue in future."

"Monseigneur!" he screamed. "Misericorde, monseigneur!"

"Aye, you shall have mercy--just so much mercy as you deserve. Have I
trusted you all these years, and did my father trust you before me,
for this? Have you grown sleek and fat and smug in my service that you
should requite me thus? Sangdieu, Rodenard! My father had hanged you
for the half of the talking that you have done this night. You dog! You
miserable knave!"

"Monseigneur," he shrieked again, "forgive! For your sainted mother's
sake, forgive! Monseigneur, I did not know--"

"But you are learning, cur; you are learning by the pain of your fat
carcase; is it not so, carrion?"

He sank down, his strength exhausted, a limp, moaning, bleeding mass of
flesh, into which my whip still cut relentlessly.

I have a picture in my mind of that ill-lighted room, of the startled
faces on which the flickering glimmer of the candles shed odd shadows;
of the humming and cracking of my whip; of my own voice raised in oaths
and epithets of contempt; of Rodenard's screams; of the cries raised
here and there in remonstrance or in entreaty, and of some more bold
that called shame upon me. Then others took up that cry of "Shame!" so
that at last I paused and stood there drawn up to my full height, as if
in challenge. Towering above the heads of any in that room, I held my
whip menacingly. I was unused to criticism, and their expressions of
condemnation roused me.

"Who questions my right?" I demanded arrogantly, whereupon they one and
all fell silent. "If any here be bold enough to step out, he shall have
my answer." Then, as none responded, I signified my contempt for them by
a laugh.

"Monseigneur!" wailed Rodenard at my feet, his voice growing feeble.

By way of answer, I gave him a final cut, then I flung the whip--
which had grown ragged in the fray--back to the ostler from whom I had
borrowed it.

"Let that suffice you, Rodenard," I said, touching him with my foot.
"See that I never set eyes upon you again, if you cherish your miserable
life!"

"Not that, monseigneur." groaned the wretch. "Oh, not that! You have
punished me; you have w