I forgot for a moment how impervious my mask and domino were to the hard stare of the old campaigner, and was preparing for an animated scuffle. It was only for a moment, of course; but the count cautiously drew a little back as the gasconading corporal, in blue uniform, white vest, and white gaiters--for my friend Gaillarde was as loud and swaggering in his assumed character as in his real one of a colonel of dragoons--drew near.
He had already twice all but got himself turned out of doors for vaunting the exploits of Napoleon le Grand, in terrific mock-heroics, and had very nearly come to hand-grips with a Prussian hussar. In fact, he would have been involved in several sanguinary rows already, had not his discretion reminded him that the object of his coming there at all, namely, to arrange a meeting with an affluent widow, on whom he believed he had made a tender impression, would not have been promoted by his premature removal from the festive scene of which he was an ornament, in charge of a couple of gendarmes.
"Money! Gold! Bah! What money can a wounded soldier like your humble servant have amassed, with but his sword-hand left, which, being necessarily occupied, places not a finger at his command with which to scrape together the spoils of a routed enemy?"
"No gold from him," said the magician. "His scars frank him."
"Bravo, Monsieur le prophète! Bravissimo! Here I am. Shall I begin, mon sorcier, without further loss of time, to question you?"
Without waiting for an answer, he commenced, in stentorian tones. After half-a-dozen questions and answers, he asked: "Whom do I pursue at present?"
"Two persons."
"Ha! Two? Well, who are they?"
"An Englishman, whom if you catch, he will kill you; and a French widow, whom if you find, she will spit in your face."
"Monsieur le magicien calls a spade a spade, and knows that his cloth protects him. No matter! Why do I pursue them?"
"The widow has inflicted a wound on your heart, and the Englishman a wound on your head. They are each separately too strong for you; take care your pursuit does not unite them."
"Bah! How could that be?"
"The Englishman protects ladies. He has got that fact into your head. The widow, if she sees, will marry him. It takes some time, she will reflect, to become a colonel, and the Englishman is unquestionably young."
"I will cut his cock's-comb for him," he ejaculated with an oath and a grin; and in a softer tone he asked, "Where is she?"