"Mon camarade, je me rappelle, d'avoir vu, il y a quelques ans, au Cafe de la Regence, un homme qui tenait tete, aux echecs, a quatre concurrens. Les habitues en disaient des merveilles. Mais ce n'etait qu'un bon bourgeois apres tout; et, nous autres, nous sommes plus forts que les bourgeois. Vouz avez joue ce soir les deux parties que, dit le proverbe, c'est presque impossible de remporter simultanement; et je ne me tiens pas pour le seul perdant." Royston did not seem in the least inclined to smile; had he done so Armand would have been bitterly disappointed. As it was, he answered very coldly, without a shade of consciousness on his face. "Un compliment merite toujours des remercimens, M. le Vicomte, meme quand on ne le comprend pas. Pardon, si je vous engage, de ne pas expliquer plus clairement votre allegorie." The other looked up at him with an expression that might almost have been mistaken for sympathy. "Parbleu!" he muttered, "si beau joueur merite bien de gagner!" CHAPTER XII. Sometimes, lying on the cliffs of Kerry or Clare, on a cloudless autumn day, when not a breath of wind is stirring, you may see rank after rank of heavy purple billows rolling sullenly in from the offing: these are messengers coming to tell us of battles fought a thousand leagues to the westward, in which they, too, have borne their part. Before the mail comes in we are prepared to hear of a storm that has worked its wicked will for nights and days, thundering among the granite boulders of Labrador, or tearing through the fog-banks of Newfoundland. This is perhaps the most commonplace of all ancient comparisons; but where will you find so apt a parallel for the vagaries of the human heart as the phases of the deep, false, beautiful sea?