alf of those titles!"

I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who now on
their feet--those that could stand--were spurring me excitedly to accept
the challenge, until from being one of the baiters it seemed that of
a sudden the tables were turned and I was become the baited. I sat in
thought, revolving the business in my mind, and frankly liking it but
little. Doubts of the issue, were I to undertake it, I had none.

My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words to
the Count had been calculated to convey. It may be--I know now that it
was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault's description, and
were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such successes as I had had with
them in such comedies of love as I had been engaged upon had given me a
false impression. But such at least was not my opinion that night. I was
satisfied that Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman lived
as he depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I was
accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and youth and
the King's favour could give him; stripped of illusions, of faith and
of zest, the very magnificence--so envied--of my existence affording me
more disgust than satisfaction. Since already I had gauged its shallows.

Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with such
insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently to beckon
me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?

"Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?" Chatellerault was gibing,
when my silence had endured some moments. "Is the cock that lately
crowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis, you are
accounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce you to this
undertaking?"

I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what I
did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less
to bolster up my former boasting--or what into boasting they had
translated.

"You'll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault?" I cried, giving him back
defiance for defiance. A breathless silence fell. "Then have it so.
Listen, gentlemen, that you may be witnesses. I do here pledge my castle
of Bardelys, and my estates in Picardy, with every stick and stone and
blade of grass that stands upon them, that I shall woo and win Roxalanne
de Lavedan to be the Marquise of Bardelys. Does the stake satisfy
you, Monsieur le Comte?