Mademoiselle, though she did not know this, bore with his insolence with a patience which astonished me; while madame appeared unconscious of it. Nevertheless, I was glad when he retired and left us in peace. I seized the moment of his absence to escort the ladies through the room and upstairs to their apartment, the door of which I saw locked and secured. That done I breathed more freely; and feeling thankful that I had been able to keep my temper, took the episode to be at an end. But in this I was mistaken, as I found when I returned to the room in which we had supped, my intention being to go through it to the stables. I had not taken two paces across the floor before I found my road blocked by the Italian, and read alike in his eyes and in the faces of the company--of whom many hastened to climb the tables to see what passed--that the meeting was premeditated. The man’s face was flushed with wine; proud of his many victories, he eyed me with a boastful contempt my patience had perhaps given him the right to feel. ‘Ha! well met, sir,’ he said, sweeping the floor with his cap in an exaggeration of respect, ‘now, perhaps, your high-mightiness will condescend to unmask? The table is no longer between us, nor are your fair friends here to protect their CHER AMI!’ ‘If I still refuse, sir,’ I said civilly, wavering between anger and prudence, and hoping still to avoid a quarrel which might endanger us all, ‘be good enough to attribute it to private motives, and to no desire to disoblige you.’ ‘No, I do not think you wish to disoblige me,’ he answered, laughing scornfully--and a dozen voices echoed the gibe. ‘But for your private motives, the devil take them! Is that plain enough, sir?’ ‘It is plain enough to show me that you are an ill-bred man!’ I answered, choler getting the better of me. ‘Let me pass, sir.’ ‘Unmask!’ he retorted, moving so as still to detain me, ‘or shall I call in the grooms to perform the office for you?’ Seeing at last that all my attempts to evade the man only fed his vanity, and encouraged him to further excesses, and that the motley crowd, who filled the room and already formed a circle round us, had made up their minds to see sport, I would no longer balk them; I could no longer do it, indeed, with honour. I looked round, therefore, for someone whom I might enlist as my second, but I saw no one with whom I had the least acquaintance. The room was lined from table to ceiling with mocking faces and scornful eyes all turned to me. My opponent saw the look, and misread it; being much accustomed, I imagine, to a one-sided battle. He laughed contemptuously. ‘No, my friend, there is no way out of it,’ he said. ‘Let me see your pretty face, or fight.’ ‘So be it,’ I said quietly. ‘If I have no other choice, I will fight.’ ‘In your mask?’ he cried incredulously.