balance to the good, but avarice rather than pride prevented his doing so.  I felt the loss myself, but what I cared chiefly about was the point of honour.  I still looked fresh, while he resembled a disinterred corpse.  As Madame Saxe urged me strongly to give way, I answered that I felt deeply grieved at not being able to satisfy such a charming woman, but that there was a question of honour in the case; and I was determined not to yield to my antagonist if I sat there till I fell dead to the ground.

I had two objects in speaking thus:  I wanted to frighten him and to make him jealous of me.  I felt certain that a man in a passion of jealousy would be quite confused, and I hoped his play would suffer accordingly, and that I should not have the mortification of losing a hundred louis to his superior play, though I won the fifty louis of the wager.

The fair Madame Saxe gave me a glance of contempt and left us, but Madame d’Urfe, who believed I was infallible, avenged me by saying to d’Entragues, in a tone of the profoundest conviction,—­

“O Lord!  I pity you, sir.”

The company did not return after supper, and we were left alone to our play.  We played on all the night, and I observed my antagonist’s face as closely as the cards.  He began to lose his composure, and made mistakes, his cards got mixed up, and his scoring was wild.  I was hardly less done up than he; I felt myself growing weaker, and I hoped to see him fall to the ground every moment, as I began to be afraid of being beaten in spite of the superior strength of my constitution.  I had won back my money by day-break, and I cavilled with him for being away for more than a quarter of an hour.  This quarrel about nothing irritated him, and roused me up; the difference of our natures produced these different results, and my stratagem succeeded because it was impromptu, and could not have been foreseen.  In the same way in war, sudden stratagems succeed.

At nine o’clock Madame Saxe came in, her lover was losing.

“Now, sir,” she said to me, “you may fairly yield.”

“Madam,” said I, “in hope of pleasing you, I will gladly divide the stakes and rise from the table.”

The tone of exaggerated gallantry with which I pronounced these words, put d’Entragues into a rage, and he answered sharply that he would not desist till one of us was dead.

With a glance at the lady which was meant to be lovelorn, but which must have been extremely languid in my exhausted state, I said,—­

“You see, Madam, that I am not the more obstinate of the two.”

A dish of soup was served to us, but d’Entragues, who was in the last stage of exhaustion, had no sooner swallowed the soup than he fell from his chair in a dead faint.  He was soon taken up, and after I had given six louis to the marker who had been watching for forty-eight hours, I pocketed the gold, and went to the apothecary’s where I took a mild emetic.  Afterwards I went to bed and slept for a few hours, and at three o’clock I made an excellent dinner.