"Oh!" he said with a smile, "I don't imagine for a moment that you have the same prejudices as our mutual friend M. le Comte de Cambray, who must have made a very violent sacrifice to his feelings when he admitted me as a guest to his own table. I am sure he must often think that the servants' hall is the proper place for me." "The Comte de Cambray," retorted de Marmont with a sneer, "is full up to his eyes with the prejudices and arrogance of his caste. It is men of his type--and not Marat or Robespierre--who made the revolution, who goaded the people of France into becoming something worse than man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America teach them the most elementary lessons of commonsense. If the Emperor had not come back to-day, we should be once more working up for revolution--more terrible this time, more bloody and vengeful, if possible, than the last." Then as Clyffurde made no comment on this peroration, the younger man resumed more lightly: "And--knowing the Comte de Cambray's prejudices as I do, imagine my surprise--after I had met you in his house as an honoured guest and on what appeared to be intimate terms of friendship--to learn that you . . . in fact . . ." "That I was nothing more than a shopkeeper," broke in Clyffurde with a short laugh, "nothing better than our mutual friend M. Dumoulin, glovemaker, of Grenoble--a highly worthy man whom M. le Comte de Cambray esteems somewhat lower than his butler. It certainly must have surprised you very much." "Well, you know, old de Cambray has a horror of anything that pertains to trade, and an avowed contempt for everything that he calls 'bourgeois.'" "There's no doubt about that," assented Clyffurde fervently. "Perhaps he does not know of your connection with . . ." "Gloves?" "With business people in Grenoble generally." "Oh, yes, he does!" replied the Englishman quietly. "Well, then?" queried de Marmont. Then as his friend sat there silent with that quiet, good-humoured smile lingering round his lips, he added apologetically: "Perhaps I am indiscreet . . . but I never could understand it . . . and you English are so reserved . . ." "That I never told you how M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Order du Lys, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, etc., etc., came to sit at the same table as a vendor and buyer of gloves," said Clyffurde gaily. "There's no secret about it. I owe the Comte's exalted condescension to certain letters of recommendation which he could not very well disregard." "Oh! as to that . . ." quoth de Marmont with a shrug of the shoulders, "people like the de Cambrays have their own codes of courtesy and of friendship." "In this case, my good de Marmont, it was the code of ordinary gratitude that imposed its dictum even upon the autocratic and aristocratic Comte de Cambray."