After supper Mademoiselle de Corandeuil proposed a game of whist to M. de Gerfaut, whose talent for the game had made a lasting impression upon her. The poet accepted this diversion with an enthusiasm equal to that he had shown for hunting, and quite as sincere too. Christian and his sister--a little gamester in embryo, like all of her family--completed the party, while Clemence took up her work and listened with an absentminded air to Marillac’s conversation. It was in vain for the latter to call art and the Middle Ages to his aid, using the very quintessence of his brightest speeches--success did not attend his effort. After the end of an hour, he had a firm conviction that Madame de Bergenheim was, everything considered, only a woman of ordinary intelligence and entirely unworthy of the passion she had inspired in his friend. “Upon my soul,” he thought, “I would a hundred times rather have Reine Gobillot for a sweetheart. I must take a trip in that direction tomorrow.” When they separated for the night, Gerfaut, bored by his evening and wounded by his reception from Clemence, which, he thought, surpassed anything he could have expected of her capricious disposition, addressed to the young woman a profound bow and a look which said: “I am here in spite of you; I shall stay here in spite of you; you shall love me in spite of yourself.” Madame de Bergenheim replied by a glance none the less expressive, in which a lover the most prone to conceit could read: “Do as you like; I have as much indifference for your love as disdain for your presumption.” This was the last shot in this preliminary skirmish. CHAPTER IX. GERFAUT, THE WIZARD