The Vidame stood stricken with impotent passion, sick well-nigh to swooning with the violence of his fury in conflict with his complete helplessness; white as wax, his boyish face distorted, his eyes blood-injected, swimming in tears; a white foam at the corners of his mouth, his lips drawn back in voiceless execration. The nails of his clenched hands drove themselves into the flesh. It was not until Paul Farrant rose and laid his hand on his shoulder that the palsy was broken. The Vidame shook the touch furiously from him. His bloodshot eyes rolled from the broken weapon on the path to the other’s face, on which a malicious pleasure in his successful friend’s mortification was but ill concealed by a scarcely more tolerable air of sympathy. Had it not been for the mutilation of his weapon, Paul Farrant’s life’s blood might well have assuaged the Frenchman’s ecstasy of hatred at that moment. Then the floodgates were loosed. Foaming, the tide of passion leaped from Enguerrand’s mouth with an eloquence that betrayed his race. Usually silent, the Vidame de Joncelles, encompassed with an almost northern reserve, yet was through his mother a child of the south; and at this hour all the exuberance of the warm land, all the acrid passion that only its children can feel and which, felt, must find word expression, broke from him in torrents of imprecations and curses, half French, half English:— “Go thy way, then, my merry Rockhurst—go, Rakehell Rockhurst! Ha, Rakehell thou mayst be, but forget not then that I am Little Satan, and you but the servant of my Great Father!… Go thy way, sanctimonious hypocrite, you of the grave face and grey-sprinkled hair, hoary in corruption! You, put me out of your path…! My hour will come, my hour will come, my hour will come! Faugh! I spit at thee; my clean blade was too fair for thee, thou coward, thou bully, hiding behind thy state and thy years…! And that prate of paternity! I, like thy son?… Had I within my veins a drop of thy coward, hateful blood, I’d drain them and die laughing that I was rid of thee! Look at the great man…! Look! Watch the reverend seigneur! See how yonder wretches make way for my Lord Constable!—My Lord Coward!… Look you, Sir Paul, is it not an admirable spectacle? The King’s friend, the mighty in council, the example to the Court! Hi, my Lord Rockhurst—Hi, thou pattern of nobility—what of my sister, what of Jeanne de Mantes?… And afraid to fight the brother! Look, look, friends! Ha, he’s old enough to be my father, and my sister—’tis his boast! I, like his son, forsooth? And my sister has but a year of life more than mine! _O, que l’âge a ses privilèges!_ Oh, how that paternal heart beats to high thoughts! Curse thee, burn thee, drown thee … coward!”