and.

"That reminds me, de Jars!" said the treasurer, "that word you have just
said piques my curiosity. For some months now this little fellow here,
Chevalier de Moranges, follows you about everywhere like your shadow.
You never told us you had a nephew. Where the devil did you get him?"

The commander touched the chevalier's knee under the table, and he, as if
to avoid speaking, slowly filled and emptied his glass.

"Look here," said the treasurer, "do you want to hear a few plain words,
such as I shall rap out when God takes me to task about the peccadilloes
of my past life? I don't believe a word about the relationship. A
nephew must be the son of either a brother or a sister. Now, your only
sister is an abbess, and your late brother's marriage was childless.
There is only one way of proving the relationship, and that is to confess
that when your brother was young and wild he and Love met, or else Madame
l'Abbesse----."

"Take care, Treasurer Jeannin! no slander against my sister!"

"Well, then, explain; you can't fool me! May I be hanged if I leave this
place before I have dragged the secret out of you! Either we are friends
or we are not. What you tell no one else you ought to tell me. What!
would you make use of my purse and my sword on occasion and yet have
secrets from me? It's too bad: speak, or our friendship is at an end! I
give you fair warning that I shall find out everything and publish it
abroad to court and city: when I strike a trail there's no turning me
aside. It will be best for you to whisper your secret voluntarily into
my ear, where it will be as safe as in the grave."

"How full of curiosity you are, my good friend!" said de Jars, leaning
one elbow on the table, and twirling the points of his moustache with his
hand; "but if I were to wrap my secret round the point of a dagger would
you not be too much afraid of pricking your fingers to pull it off?"

"Not I," said the king's treasurer, beginning to twirl his moustache
also: "the doctors have always told me that I am of too full a complexion
and that it would do me all the good in the world to be bled now and
then. But what would be an advantage to me would be dangerous to you.
It's easy to see from your jaundiced phiz that for you blood-letting is
no cure."

"And you would really go that length? You would risk a duel if I refused
to let you get to the bottom of my mystery?"

"Yes, on my honour! Well, how is it to be?"