He sits in the room which should be mine, his great boots on my Spanish leather chairs, his pipe in his mouth, his wine-pot at his elbow, and his talk a hissing and an abomination.

He has beaten old Pierre of the warehouse." "Ha!" "And thrust me into the cellar." "Ha!" "Because I have dragged him back when in his drunken love he would have thrown his arms about your cousin Adele." "Oh!" The young man's colour had been rising and his brows knitted at each successive charge, but at this last his anger boiled over, and he hurried forward with fury in his face, dragging his elderly companion by the elbow.

They had been passing through one of those winding paths, bordered by high hedges, which thinned away every here and there to give a glimpse of some prowling faun or weary nymph who slumbered in marble amid the foliage.

The few courtiers who met them gazed with surprise at so ill-assorted a pair of companions.

But the young soldier was too full of his own plans to waste a thought upon their speculations.