"you are one of those men who are made by the divine Shakespeare
to say of themselves:

"'Danger and I--
We were two lions littered in one day,
But I the elder.'"




CHAPTER V

ROLAND

The return was silent and mournful; it seemed that with the hopes
of death Roland's gayety had disappeared.

The catastrophe of which he had been the author played perhaps a
part in his taciturnity. But let us hasten to say that in battle,
and more especially during the last campaign against the Arabs,
Roland had been too frequently obliged to jump his horse over
the bodies of his victims to be so deeply impressed by the death
of an unknown man.

His sadness was, due to some other cause; probably that which he
confided to Sir John. Disappointment over his own lost chance of
death, rather than that other's decease, occasioned this regret.

On their return to the Hotel du Palais-Royal, Sir John mounted to
his room with his pistols, the sight of which might have excited