He smiled to prove it.  Nor do I think his complaisance altogether feigned.  The temper of our host amused him.

As for friend Peyrot, he still looked dazed.  I thought it was because he had not yet made up his mind what line to take; but had I viewed him with neutral eyes I might easily have deemed his bewilderment genuine.

“Perhaps we should get on better if I could understand what monsieur is driving at?” he suggested.  “Monsieur’s remarks about his noble father and the general-duke are interesting, but humble Jean Peyrot, who does not move in court circles, is at a loss to translate them.  In other words, I have no notion what you are talking about.”

“Oh, come,” M. Etienne cried, “no shuffling, Peyrot.  We know as well as you where you were before dawn.”

“Before dawn?  Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous.”

M. Etienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot’s self might have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an alcove, and disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow undisturbed.  He turned with a triumphant grin on the owner, who showed all his teeth pleasantly in answer, no whit abashed.

“For all you are a count, monsieur, you have the worst manners ever came inside these walls.”

M. le Comte, with no attempt at mending them, went on a tour about the room, examining with sniffing interest all its furniture, even to the dishes and tankards on the table.  Peyrot, leaning against the wall by the window, regarded him steadily, with impassive face.  At length M. Etienne walked over to the chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately put his hand on the key.

Instantly Peyrot’s voice rang out, “Stop!” M. Etienne, turning, looked into his pistol-barrel.

My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his fingers on the key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with raised, protesting eyebrows and laughing mouth.  But though he laughed, he stood still.

“If you make a movement I do not like, M. de Mar, I will shoot you as I would a rat.  Your side is down and mine is up; I have no fear to kill you.  It will be painful to me, but if necessary I shall do it.”

M. Etienne sat down on the chest and smiled more amiably than ever.

“Why—­have I never known you before, Peyrot?”

“One moment, monsieur.”  The nose of the pistol pointed around to me.  “Go over there to the door, you.”

I retreated, covered by the shining muzzle, to a spot that pleased him.

“Now are we more comfortable,” Peyrot observed, pulling a chair over against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee.  “Monsieur was saying?”

Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he liked his present one the best.  He had brought none of the airs of the noble into this business, realizing shrewdly that they would but hamper him, as lace ruffles hamper a duellist.  Peyrot, treeless adventurer, living by his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a count no more than a hod-carrier.  His occasional mocking deference was more insulting than outright rudeness; but M. Etienne bore it unruffled.  Possibly he schooled himself so to bear it, but I think rather that he felt so easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot’s impudence merely tickled him.