The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones only laughed,
quite prepared for the adventure which must inevitably ensue, the only
possible ending to a quarrel such as this.

Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question. Deroulede should
have known better than to speak disrespectfully of Adele de Montcheri,
when the little Vicomte de Marny's infatuation for the notorious
beauty had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these many months
past.

Adele was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed and egotism. The
Marnys were rich and the little Vicomte very young, and just now the
brightly-plumaged hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly
arrived from its ancestral cote.

The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation. To him
Adele was a paragon of all the virtues, and he would have done battle
on her behalf against the entire aristocracy of France, in a vain
endeavour to justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most
dissolute women of the epoch. He was a first-rate swordsman too, and
his friends had already learned that it was best to avoid all
allusions to Adele's beauty and weaknesses.

But Deroulede was a noted blunderer. He was little versed in the
manners and tones of that high society in which, somehow, he still
seemed and intruder. But for his great wealth, no doubt, he never
would have been admitted within the intimate circle of aristocratic
France. His ancestry was somewhat doubtful and his coat-of-arms
unadorned with quarterings.