Since already I had gauged its shallows.
Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with such insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently to beckon me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?
"Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys ?" Chatellerault was gibing, when my silence had endured some moments.

"Is the cock that lately crowed so lustily now dumb?
Look you, Monsieur le Marquis, you are accounted here a reckless gamester.

Will a wager induce you to this undertaking ?" I leapt to my feet at that.

His derision cut me like a whip.

If what I did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less to bolster up my former boasting--or what into boasting they had translated.
"You'll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault ?" I cried, giving him back defiance for defiance.