"Dare you attempt to lay the blame of this matter on me?" asked Ronald, indignantly. "You are alone the cause of all this uproar. The baron has mistaken me for you."
"And the baroness has done the same. _Diable!_"
"Retreat without beat of drum, I suppose."
"That would show but poor spirit, I think."
"_Eh bien!_ you are right. I will show face. The baron is only a man, and a man five feet high by six round the waist. I will brazen it out, and swear by a caisson of devils ’tis all a mistake. I will, by the bomb! and could do so in the presence of his Jolliness the Pope. _Vive la joie_! Come with me, my friend, and I will explain all the uproar to this outrageous baron. I am used to squabbles of this kind, and will soothe his vivacity. _Peste!_ what a hideous noise he makes!"
The baron had roared himself hoarse, and Jacques, with five other stout servants, had been barely able to keep him fast in his arm-chair, where he panted, kicked, and bellowed, swearing by every thing in heaven and on earth that he would pistol De Mesmai, slay his wife, and murder them all. He would get a _lettre de cachet_,—forgetting that the days of such matters had happily passed away,—and immure them all in the dungeons of the Bastile. He would rouse the powers of darkness to revenge him! At last a terrible fit of the gout fairly stopped his clamour, and he was borne off to bed, speechless and in imminent danger. The baroness appeared no more, and De Mesmai, the cause of the whole disturbance, sat with perfect nonchalance, with his legs stretched out before the library fire, a glass of wine in one hand and twirling a moustache with the other, while swearing to Stuart by the bomb that he had never heard such an outcry before!
"Positively, my friend," said he, "had I carried off the baroness in a chaise and four, en route for Calais or Brussels, he could not have made a greater noise. _Peste_! I believe I am entitled to demand satisfaction for this annoyance. I shall certainly consult some of ours to-morrow, and hear what ought to be done."
It was evident that they would see the baroness no more that night, and the domestics of the establishment eyed them with strange looks; for though they were accustomed to the irascible temper of the baron, they were puzzled to account for such a sudden disturbance.