rs!" exclaimed the artist, in a sort of transport,
"foolish, absurd, wicked, impious, and sacrilegious kind!"

"What of it?"

"What of it? I tell you this will all end with swords for two."

"Bah!"

"Do you know that this rabid Bergenheim, with his round face and
good-natured smile, killed three or four men while he was in the
service, on account of a game of billiards or some such trivial matter?"

"Requiescat in pace."

"Take care that he does not cause the 'De Profundis' to be sung for you.
He was called the best swords man at Saint-Cyr: he has the devil of a
lunge. As to pistol-shooting, I have seen him break nine plaster images
at Lepage's one after another."

"Very well, if I have an engagement with him, we will fight it out with
arsenic."

"By Jove, joking is out of place. I tell you that he is sure to discover
something, and then your business will soon be settled; he will kill you
as if you were one of the hares he is hunting this moment."

"You might find a less humiliating comparison for me," replied Gerfaut,
with an indifferent smile; "however, you exaggerate. I have always
noticed that these bullies with mysterious threats of their own and
these slaughterers of plaster images were not such very dangerous
fellows to meet. This is not disputing Bergenheim's bravery, for I
believe it to be solid and genuine."

"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 boas