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 is doing them an honour of which they are not worthy.

But we have these ladies to think of, Messieurs, and--" he paused to apply the rappee to his nostrils--"and we must exert ourselves to save them, however disagreeable the course we may be compelled to pursue.