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"It is customary," de Puysange said. He appeared to deliberate something entirely alien to this reply, however, and now sat silent for a matter of four seconds, his countenance profoundly grave. At last de Puysange began: "I think I follow you. It is quite proper that you should marry.
DUC DE PUYSANGE, a true Frenchman, a pert, railing fribble, but at bottom a man of parts. MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, a brisk, conceited rake, and distant cousin to de Puysange. CAZAIO, captain of brigands. DOM MICHEL FREGOSE, a lewd, rascally friar. GUITON, steward to de Puysange. PAWSEY, Ormskirk's man. ACHON, a knave. MICHAULT, another knave.
"Decidedly," spoke de Puysange, and turned toward her with a slight grimace, "I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably about the octogenarian." "Ah, Gaston," she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, "let us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I."
"She was formerly known," John Bulmer answered, "as Mademoiselle Claire de Puysange." The Duchess spoke for the first time. "Oh, the poor man! Monsieur de Soyecourt, he is evidently insane." "I do not know about that," the Marquis said, fretfully, "but in any event I hope that no more people will come to Bellegarde upon missions which, compel me to have them hanged.
"Open it!" she answered, and her speech, too, was breathless. Under his heel the Duc de Puysange ground the trinket. The long, thin chain clashed and caught about his foot; the face of his youth smiled from the fragment in his not quite steady hands. "O heart' of gold!
Jacques," he called, to the appearing lackey, "request Mademoiselle de Puysange to honor us, if it be convenient, with her presence. Nay, I pray you, do not rise, Mr. Bulmer; I am of a nervous disposition, startled by the least movement, and my finger, as you may note, is immediately upon the trigger."
"And Arnaye ?" said she. "Undoubtedly," said Sieur Raymond, "Arnaye must perish unless Puysange prove her friend. Therefore, my niece conquers her natural aversion to a young and wealthy husband, and a life of comfort and flattery and gayety; relinquishes you, Raoul; and, like a feminine Mettius Curtius, sacrifices herself to her country's welfare.
But Sieur Raymond merely chuckled wheezily, as one discovering a fault in his companion of which he disapproves in theory, but in practice finds flattering to his vanity. "I grant you, Monsieur de Puysange drives a good bargain," said Sieur Raymond. "Were Cleopatra thus featured, the Roman lost the world very worthily.
Yet consider this: Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, lying here between the Breton and the Austrian, we are so many nuts in a door-crack, at the next wind's mercy. And yonder in the South, Orleans and Dunois are raising every devil in Hell's register!
"Yet your gay laughter, Messire de Puysange, is after all but breath: and breath also" the bishop's sharp eyes fixed Perion's "has a hackneyed rhyme." "Indeed, it is the grim rhyme that rounds off and silences all our rhyming," Perion assented. "I must laugh, then, without rhyme or reason." Still the young prelate talked rather oddly.
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