"
The lady, not being accustomed to exchanging compliments with a
man-servant, went to her maid and talked with her in whispers, the two
both gazing at Blaise with expressions of mirth.
Blaise strode to my side with an awkwardness quite new to him. His face
was in a violent perspiration.
"The devil!" he whispered. "How they laugh at me! Won't you explain?"
"Impossible!"
"I object to being taken for a calf," said Blaise, ready to burst with
anger. Then, suddenly reaching the limit of his endurance, he faced the
lady and blurted out:
"Mademoiselle, I would have run your pursuer through quickly enough, but
I dared not rob my master--"
I coughed a warning against his betraying us. He hesitated, then
despairingly added, in a voice of resignation:
"--my master, the King, of a single stroke of this sword, which I have
devoted entirely to his service."
"I do not doubt," said the lady, with cold irony, "that your sword is
active enough when drawn in the service of your King."
"My King," replied Blaise with dignity, "had the goodness to make a
somewhat similar remark when he took Cahors!"
"Cahors?" repeated the lady in a tone of perplexity. "But the King never
took Cahors!"
"The King of France,--no!" cried Blaise; "but the King of Navarre did!"
"Blaise!" I cried, in angry reproof at his imprudence.
The tone in which I spoke had so startled the lady that she dropped her
mask, and I saw the sweetest face that ever gladdened the eyes of a man.
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