the more probable was it that I should be discredited. Alas!
Bardelys, it seemed, had added cowardice to his other short-comings.

As for the coldness of Roxalanne, that was a pretty fable of
Chatellerault's; or else no more than an assumption, an invention
of the imaginative La Fosse. Far, indeed, from it, I found no
arrogance or coldness in her. All unversed in the artifices of her
sex, all unacquainted with the wiles of coquetry, she was the very
incarnation of naturalness and maidenly simplicity. To the tales
that - with many expurgations - I told her of Court life, to the
pictures that I drew of Paris, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the
Palais Cardinal, and the courtiers that thronged those historic
palaces, she listened avidly and enthralled; and much as Othello won
the heart of Desdemona by a recital of the perils he had endured, so
it seemed to me was I winning the heart of Roxalanne by telling her
of the things that I had seen.

Once or twice she expressed wonder at the depth and intimacy of the
knowledge of such matters exhibited by a simple Gascon gentleman,
whereupon I would urge, in explanation, the appointment in the Guards
that Lesperon had held some few years ago, a position that will reveal
much to an observant man.

The Vicomte noted our growing intimacy, yet set no restraint upon it.
Down in his heart I believe that noble gentleman would have been well
pleased had matters gone to extremes between us, for however
impoverished he might deem me; Lesperon's estates in Gascony being,
as I have said, likely to suffer sequestration in view of his treason
--he remembered the causes of this and the deep devotion of the man
I impersonated to the affairs of Gaston d'Orleans.