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