"Hang it!" said Touquet, smiling ironically, "do you know, Chaudoreille, that you yourself are worth three patrols of the watch? It seems to me that the King or Monsieur le Cardinal should recompense such fine conduct and nominate you to some important place in the police of this city, in place of leaving a man so brave, so useful, to ramble about the streets all day, and haunt the gambling-hells in order to try to borrow a crown." "Yes," said Chaudoreille, without appearing to notice the latter part of the barber's phrase, "I know that I am very brave, and that my sword has often been very useful to the State--that is to say, to the oppressed. I work without pay; I yield to every movement of my heart; it's in the blood. Zounds! honor before everything; and in this century we do not jest. I am what somebody at court calls a 'rake of honor': an offensive twinkle of the eye, a rather cold bow, a cloak which rubs against mine, presto! my sword is in my hand; I am conscious of nothing but that; I would fight with a child of five years if he treated me with disrespect." "I know that we live in the age when one fights for a mere trifle, but I never heard it said that your duels had caused much stir." "What the devil, my dear Touquet! the dead cannot speak; and those who have an affair with me never return. You have heard tell of the famous Balagni, nicknamed the 'Brave,' who was killed in a duel about fifteen years ago. Well, my friend, I am his pupil and his successor." "It's unfortunate for you that you didn't come into the world two centuries earlier; tourneys are beginning to be out of fashion, and chevaliers who right all wrongs, giant killers, one no longer sees except on the stage at plays." "It's very certain that if I had lived in the time of the Crusades I should have brought from Palestine a thousand Saracens' ears, but my dear Rolande was there. This redoubtable sword, which came to me from a distant cousin, was the one carried by Rolande the Furious; it has sent a devil of a lot of men into the other world." "I'm always afraid that you will fall over it; it seems to me too big for you." "It has, however, been curtailed an inch since I have had it, and that by reason of its having been used so much. I fear that if I should continue in the same style, it will become a little dagger." "Stop talking about your prowess, Chaudoreille; I have to speak to you of matters more interesting than that." "If you will shave me first; I have great need of it. My beard grows twice as quickly at night when I do not sup in the evening." "It looks as if you had dieted for some days, then."