'"Now listen! Now listen!" said René. "This will be moneys in your pockets, my dear _confrère_. You will become rich."
'Then Dr. Break said something about adventurers who could not earn an honest living in their own country creeping into decent houses and taking advantage of gentlemen's confidence to enrich themselves by base intrigues.
'René dropped his absurd trumpet and made one of his best bows. I knew he was angry from the way he rolled his "r's."
'"Ver-r-ry good," said he. "For that I shall have much pleasure to kill you now and here. Monsieur Gamm"--another bow to Jerry--"you will please lend him your pistol, or he shall have mine. I give you my word I know not which is best; and if he will choose a second from his friends over there"--another bow to our drunken yokels at the gate--"we will commence."
'"That's fair enough," said Jerry. "Tom Dunch, you owe it to the doctor to be his second. Place your man."
'"No," said Tom. "No mixin' in gentry's quarrels for me." And he shook his head and went out, and the others followed him.
'"Hold on," said Jerry. "You've forgot what you set out to do up at the alehouse just now. You was goin' to search me for witchmarks; you was goin' to duck me in the pond; you was goin' to drag all my bits o' sticks out o' my little cottage here. What's the matter with you? Wouldn't you like to be with your old woman to-night, Tom?"
'But they didn't even look back, much less come. They ran to the village alehouse like hares.
'"No matter for these canaille," said René, buttoning up his coat so as not to show any linen. All gentlemen do that before a duel, Dad says--and he's been out five times. "You shall be his second, Monsieur Gamm. Give him the pistol."
'Dr. Break took it as if it was red-hot, but he said that if René resigned his pretensions in certain quarters he would pass over the matter. René bowed deeper than ever.
'"As for that," he said, "if you were not the ignorant which you are, you would have known long ago that the subject of your remarks is not for any living man."
'I don't know what the subject of his remarks might have been, but he spoke in a simply dreadful voice, my dear, and Dr. Break turned quite white, and said René was a liar; and then René caught him by the throat, and choked him black.