“Comedian!” the Marquis contemptuously apostrophized him.  “Does it alter the case?  Are these men who have opposed you men who live by the sword like yourself?”

“On the contrary, M. le Marquis, I have found them men who died by the sword with astonishing ease.  I cannot suppose that you desire to add yourself to their number.”

“And why, if you please?” La Tour d’Azyr’s face had flamed scarlet before that sneer.

“Oh,” Andre-Louis raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, a man considering.  He delivered himself slowly.  “Because, monsieur, you prefer the easy victim — the Lagrons and Vilmorins of this world, mere sheep for your butchering.  That is why.”

And then the Marquis struck him.

Andre-Louis stepped back.  His eyes gleamed a moment; the next they were smiling up into the face of his tall enemy.

“No better than the others, after all!  Well, well!  Remark, I beg you, how history repeats itself — with certain differences.  Because poor Vilmorin could not bear a vile lie with which you goaded him, he struck you.  Because you cannot bear an equally vile truth which I have uttered, you strike me.  But always is the vileness yours.  And now as then for the striker there is... " He broke off.  “But why name it?  You will remember what there is.  Yourself you wrote it that day with the point of your too-ready sword.  But there.  I will meet you if you desire it, monsieur.”

“What else do you suppose that I desire?  To talk?”

Andre-Louis turned to his friends and sighed.  “So that I am to go another jaunt to the Bois.  Isaac, perhaps you will kindly have a word with one of these friends of M. le Marquis’, and arrange for nine o’clock to-morrow, as usual.”

“Not to-morrow,” said the Marquis shortly to Le Chapeher.  “I have an engagement in the country, which I cannot postpone.”

Le Chapelier looked at Andre-Louis.

“Then for M. le Marquis’ convenience, we will say Sunday at the same hour.”

“I do not fight on Sunday.  I am not a pagan to break the holy day.”

“But surely the good God would not have the presumption to damn a gentleman of M. le Marquis’ quality on that account?  Ah, well, Isaac, please arrange for Monday, if it is not a feast-day or monsieur has not some other pressing engagement.  I leave it in your hands.”

He bowed with the air of a man wearied by these details, and threading his arm through Kersain’s withdrew.

“Ah, Dieu de Dieu!  But what a trick of it you have,” said the Breton deputy, entirely unsophisticated in these matters.

“To be sure I have.  I have taken lessons at their hands.”  He laughed.  He was in excellent good-humour.  And Kersain was enrolled in the ranks of those who accounted Andre-Louis a man without heart or conscience.

But in his “Confessions” he tells us — and this is one of the glimpses that reveal the true man under all that make-believe — that on that night he went down on his knees to commune with his dead friend Philippe, and to call his spirit to witness that he was about to take the last step in the fulfilment of the oath sworn upon his body at Gavrillac two years ago.