themselves so that they might render assistance.

His instances were met with a certain coldness, which at last was
given expression by the most elegant Vicomte d'Ombreval - the man
who was about to become his son-in-law.

"My dear Marquis," protested the young man, his habitually
supercilious mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he
now spoke, "I beg that you will consider what you are proposing. We
are your guests, we others, and you ask us to defend your gates
against your own people for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first
duty should have been to have ensured our safety against such
mutinies on the part of the rabble of Bellecour."

The Seigneur angrily stamped his foot. In his choler he was within
an ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not the
broad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at that
moment to make clear to the Marquis's guests a situation than which
nothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the times
were changed, and that France was no longer what France had been;
that allowances must be made for M. de Bellecour, who was in no
better case than any other gentleman in that unhappy country! and
finally, that either they must look to arming and defending
themselves or they must say their prayers and submit to being
butchered with the ladies.

"For ourselves," he concluded calmly, tapping his gold snuffbox and
holding it out to Bellecour, for all the world with the air of one
who was discussing the latest fashion in wigs, "I can understand
your repugnance at coming to blows with this obscene canaille. It