“Let us try the other side, Monsieur, and, as it is too far to go around this, suppose we jump it,” and he laughed as he noted Calvert’s look of surprise at his proposition.

“As you wish, Monsieur,” assented Calvert, though somewhat dubiously, as he noted the breadth of the roughened surface, and mentally calculated that to miss the clear jump by a hair’s-breadth would ensure a hard, perhaps dangerous, fall.  ’Twas no easy jump under ordinary circumstances; weighted down by skates the difficulty would be vastly increased.

“Tis too wide for a standing jump, Monsieur,” said St. Aulaire, looking alternately at Calvert and the rift of broken, jagged ice, and laughing recklessly.  “We will have to run for it!” And without more words the two gentlemen skated rapidly back for twenty yards and then came forward with tremendous velocity, pari passu, and, both jumping at the same instant, landed on the far side of the ledge, scattering the applauding spectators right and left as they drove in among them, unable for an instant to stop the swiftness of their progress.

“Well done, Monsieur!” called out St. Aulaire, as he wheeled beside Calvert, who had succeeded in checking his impetus.  He was smiling, but there was a dark look in his eyes.  “Well done, but ’twas too easy—­a very school-boy’s trick!  We must try something a little more difficult to test our agility upon the ice—­unless, indeed, Monsieur has had enough?” and he looked at Calvert insultingly full in the face.  “The eyes of the world are upon us—­” and he waved his hand mockingly toward the throng of spectators on the terrace where the ladies were applauding with gloved hands and the men tapping the frozen ground with canes and swords.  From where he stood Calvert could see Mr. Jefferson looking at him and Mr. Morris sitting beside Madame de Flahaut and Madame de St. Andre, who had left the ice and joined the onlookers.

“It has never been my custom or my desire, Monsieur, to furnish amusement for the crowd,” said Calvert, returning St. Aulaire’s insolent look, “but I should be very sorry to stand in the way of your doing so by declining to act as a foil to your prowess.  If there is anything else I can do for you—?” and he bowed and smiled tranquilly at Monsieur de St. Aulaire, who blushed darkly with vexation at the way in which the young man had turned his attack.

“Monsieur is too modest,” he said, suavely, controlling himself, and then, calling one of the attendants who was busy near-by sweeping the snow cut by the skates from the ice, he instructed the fellow to bring one of the chairs which had been taken from the palace to the terrace for the convenience of those who had not had their servants bring them.  In a few moments the man returned with a large chair whose deep seat and long arms just suited the purposes of Monsieur de St. Aulaire.  Under his direction the man placed it sidewise upon the stratum of broken, irregular ice and snow, the crowd looking on with curiosity at the unusual proceedings.