"Come, hasten yourself, and serve us supper of all that you can get together; there are always provisions here. You have a poultry yard, a pigeon house; put some fowls quickly on the spit. We'll play while waiting for them to be served. Prepare the card table. Open that drawer, there are some cards and dice in it. Gentlemen, you will perhaps have meagre fare. I did not expect the pleasure of entertaining you this evening, but at least you shall have some good wine. The cellar is well furnished and we shall not lack champagne." "Hang it! that's the principal thing," said a big, pale young man whose features were regular, but who was disfigured by the scar of a sword-cut across his left cheek. "I, too, am of the vicomte's opinion," said his neighbor, who appeared to be some years older, and whose stoutness and high color contrasted with the physique of the first speaker. "Champagne before everything." "Oh, I recognize there that drunkard De Montgeran," said the young man with disordered costume. "As for me I am not displeased when the entertainment consists of wine. But let's play, gentlemen, let's play; it's necessary that I should recoup a hat and a cloak." "You might even add a doublet; for I don't think that you can present yourself anywhere in that one." "Those cursed shopkeepers, how they did resist this evening. That's all right, I had flogged three of them." "Yes, but except for the marquis and I you would have been in a very bad position." "Well! what the devil brought the quarrel about? for I don't know yet why I fought." "A trifling thing, a mere bagatelle; because I was carrying off with me a little bookkeeper's wife, the impertinent husband permitted himself to shout! The idiot, I should have sent his wife back at the end of two days. Hang it! I'd no desire to keep her." "Perhaps that's why he was angry." "I said a couple of words for him to the superintendent; before long our clerk will be destitute." "That's as it should be, it's necessary to teach these plebeians manners, who persuade themselves that they only take a wife for themselves." "In your place I should have asked for a lettre-de-cachet." "We shall see; that might still be done." During this conversation Marcel had prepared everything; he went down to the groundfloor and, while making his preparations for supper, called his comrade in a low tone, and looked in every corner of the room, but he had disappeared. "Where the devil has he hidden himself," said Marcel, who then looked in all the other rooms and went down to the cellar, where he called Chaudoreille again without receiving any answer. "He has apparently escaped into the garden and from there he will have jumped over the walls, as he said he would do. However, that astonishes me, for he would hardly care to leave the house."