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"Had I been born a gentleman, do you say?" quoth he, in a slow, bewildered voice. "But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, monsieur." From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin. "You have been deceived in that, I fear." "Deceived?"
The Marquis presented to his opponent the narrow edge of his upright body, his knees slightly flexed and converted into living springs, whilst M. de Vilmorin stood squarely, a full target, his knees wooden. Honour and the spirit of fair play alike cried out against such a match. The encounter was very short, of course.
This new starting point invokes quite another principle of selection, a principle which threatens to make the contrast between artificial and natural selection still greater. In fact it is nothing new, being in use formerly in the selection of domestic animals, and having been applied by Vilmorin to his sugar beets more than half a century ago.
He drew tears from them with the pathos of his picture of the bereaved widow Mabey and her three starving, destitute children "orphaned to avenge the death of a pheasant" and the bereaved mother of that M. de Vilmorin, a student of Rennes, known here to many of them, who had met his death in a noble endeavour to champion the cause of an esurient member of their afflicted order.
Into a room on the right, rendered private to M. le Marquis for so long as he should elect to honour it, the young men were ushered by the host. A fire of logs was burning brightly at the room's far end, and by this sat now M. de La Tour d'Azyr and his cousin, the Chevalier de Chabrillane. Both rose as M. de Vilmorin came in. Andre-Louis following, paused to close the door.
Not until I perceived that the trees around me appeared to spring into life did it occur to me that that clashing of blades was a signal, and that I was trapped. With the realisation of it I was upon Vilmorin in a bound, and with both hands I had caught the dog by the throat before he thought of flight.
La Tour d'Azyr writhed at the well-known phrase his own phrase the phrase that he had used to explain his action in the matter of Philippe de Vilmorin, the phrase that from time to time had been cast in his teeth with such vindictive menace. And then the crisp voice of the witty Canales, that very rapier of the Privileged party, cut sharply into the speaker's momentary pause.
"You oblige me by your prompt courtesy, M. de Vilmorin," said the Marquis, but in a tone so cold as to belie the politeness of his words. "A chair, I beg. Ah, Moreau?" The note was frigidly interrogative. "He accompanies you, monsieur?" he asked. "If you please, M. le Marquis." "Why not? Find yourself a seat, Moreau." He spoke over his shoulder as to a lackey.
Two minutes later I was in the saddle riding with Michelot in the wake of the carriage. As I have already sought to indicate in these pages, Michelot was as much my friend as my servant. It was therefore no more than natural that I should communicate to him my fears touching what might come of the machinations of St. Auban, Vilmorin, and even, perchance, of that little firebrand, Malpertuis.
Such cases of atavism make it probable that the coherence of the petals has originally arisen by the same method, but by action in the opposite direction. The direct proof of this conclusion is afforded by a curious observation, made by Vilmorin upon the bright and large-flowered garden-poppy, Papaver bracteatum. Like all poppies it has four petals, which are free from one another.
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