Yet in my house I would strive that he should have no foretaste of
that coldness that to-morrow all Paris would be showing him, and
to this end I played the host with all the graciousness that role
may bear, and overwhelmed him with my cordiality, whilst to thaw
all iciness from the bearing of my other guests, I set the wines to
flow more freely still. My dignity would permit no less of me,
else would it have seemed that I rejoiced in a rival's downfall and
took satisfaction from the circumstance that his disfavour with the
King was like to result in my own further exaltation.

My efforts were not wasted. Slowly the mellowing influence of the
grape pronounced itself. To this influence I added that of such
wit as Heaven has graced me with, and by a word here and another
there I set myself to lash their mood back into the joviality out
of which his coming had for the moment driven it.

And so, presently, Good-Humour spread her mantle over us anew, and
quip and jest and laughter decked our speech, until the noise of
our merry-making drifting out through the open windows must have
been borne upon the breeze of that August night down the rue
Saint-Dominique, across the rue de l'Enfer, to the very ears perhaps
of those within the Luxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his
friends kept another of those revels which were become a byword in
Paris, and had contributed not a little to the sobriquet of
"Magnificent" which men gave me.

But, later, as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the
sake of the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew
more barbed and less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a
moment, like a bird of prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down