“I tell you, he is a regular lion!  After all, you will admit that it is sheer folly to come and attack him in his cage and pull his whiskers through the bars.  And that is what you are doing.  To be in love with his wife and pay court to her in Paris, when he is a hundred leagues from you, is all very well, but to install yourself in his house, within reach of his clutches! that is not love, it is sheer madness.  This is nothing to laugh at.  I am sure that this will end in some horrible tragedy.  You heard him speak of killing his wife and her lover just now, as if it were a very slight matter.  Very. well; I know him; he will do as he says without flinching.  These ruddy-faced people are very devils, if you meddle with their family affairs!  He is capable of murdering you in some corner of his park, and of burying you at the foot of some tree and then of forcing Madame de Bergenheim to eat your heart fricasseed in champagne, as they say Raoul de Coucy did.”

“You will admit, at least, that it would be a very charming repast, and that there would be nothing bourgeois about it.”

“Certainly, I boast of detesting the bourgeois; I am celebrated for that; but I should much prefer to die in a worsted nightcap, flannel underwear, and cotton night-shirt, than to have Bergenheim assist me, too brusquely, in this little operation.  He is such an out-and-out Goliath!  Just look at him!”

And the artist forced his friend to turn about, and pointed at Christian, who stood with the other hunters upon the brow of the hill, a few steps from the spot where they had left him.  The Baron was indeed a worthy representative of the feudal ages, when physical strength was the only incontestable superiority.  In spite of the distance, they could hear his clear, ringing voice although they could not distinguish his words.

“He really has a look of the times of the Round Table,” said Gerfaut; “five or six hundred years ago it would not have been very agreeable to find one’s self face to face with him in a tournament; and if to-day, as in those times, feminine hearts were won by feats with double-edged swords, I admit that my chances would not be very good.  Fortunately, we are emancipated from animal vigor; it is out, of fashion.”

“Out of fashion, if you like; meanwhile, he will kill you.”

“You do not understand the charms of danger nor the attractions that difficulties give to pleasure.  I have studied Christian thoroughly since I have been here, and I know him as well as if I had passed my life with him.  I am also sure that, at the very first revelation, he will kill me if he can, and I take a strange interest in knowing that I risk my life thus.  Here we are in the woods,” said Gerfaut, as he dropped the artist’s arm and ceased limping; “they can no longer see us; the farce is played out.  You know what I told you to say if you join them:  you left me at the foot of a tree.  You are forbidden to approach the sycamores, under penalty of receiving the shot from my gun in your moustache.”