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The circle of intent faces broken and shifting the silence succeeded by a hundred conversations De Caylus leaning back, sipping his wine and chatting over his shoulder the cards pushed aside, and Dalrymple gravely sorting out little shining columns of Napoleons, and rolls of crisp bank paper!
"Heavens!" I exclaimed, "you are not wounded?" "Very slightly. De Caylus was too good a shot to miss me altogether. Pshaw! 'tis nothing a mere graze not even the bullet left in it!" "If it had been a little more to the left...." I faltered. "If he had fired one second sooner, or lived one second longer, he would have had me through the heart, as sure as there's a heaven above us!" said Dalrymple.
He pointed to a small inner room divided by a rich hanging from the farther end of the salon. "You will find Major Dalrymple in Madame de Ste. Amaranthe's boudoir, playing with M. le Vicomte de Caylus," said he, courteously, and resumed his game. Playing with De Caylus! Sitting down amicably with De Caylus! I could not understand it.
I read the hesitation of the gang in their faces: and when one asked roughly who we were, I replied with greater boldness, "I am M. Anne de Caylus, nephew to the Vicomte de Caylus, Governor, under the King, of Bayonne and the Landes!" This I said with what majesty I could. "And these" I continued "are my brothers. You will harm us at your peril, gentlemen.
All would know that the terms immaterial something do in very truth mean nothing. Count de Caylus died as became a man convinced that soul is not an entity, and that upon the dissolution of our 'earthly tabernacle', the particles composing it cease to perform vital functions, and return to the shoreless ocean of Eternal Being.
A single glance downwards told me that the man was dead, and I set my foot upon his neck. "Hounds! Beasts!" I cried, not loudly this time, for though I was like one possessed with rage, it was inward rage, "go to your kennels! Will you dare to raise a hand against a Caylus? Go or when the Vicomte returns, a dozen of you shall hang in the market-place!"
The exile of Caylus afterwards made his fortune. We had another instance, about this time, of the perfidy of Harlay.
De Caylus took his pistols one by one, weighed and poised them, examined the priming, and finally, after much hesitation, decided. Dalrymple took the first that came to hand. The combatants then took their places De Caylus with his hat pulled low over his eyes; Dalrymple still smoking carelessly. They exchanged bows. "Major Dalrymple," said De Simoncourt, "it is for you to fire first."
De Caylus played the king, and both threw down their cards. A loud murmur broke out instantaneously in every direction, and De Caylus, looking excited and weary, leaned back in his chair, and called for wine. His expression was so unlike that of a victor that I thought at first he must have lost the game. "Which is the winner?" I asked, eagerly. "Which is the winner?"
Dacier, one who fitly closes the long series of great and brilliant women of the age of Louis XIV., who only partly resembles them and yet does not quite take on the faded and decadent coloring of the next age, was Mme. de Caylus, the niece of Mme. de Maintenon.
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