This dangerous conversation was brought to an end by the noisy entrance of the three neighbors. Never had doors opened to more welcome guests. They had not, moreover, come to quarrel over involved questions of succession, but to play tarok; and it is an acknowledged axiom--tarok before everything! Chevalier Galban excused himself on the plea that he only played hazard, and that for high stakes. "Well, then, sit down and have a game of chess with my wife. But look to your laurels; Bethsaba plays a good game." Thus Chevalier Galban settled to a game that is the greatest hazard in all the world, and is played for the highest stakes of all. CHAPTER XLVIII THE MOUSE PLAYS WITH THE CAT The men flung their cards upon the table as though they meant to make it suffer, and after every game set to quarrelling. "This card should have been played, not that, for we were winning!" The men said things to each other which, had not the cards been in their hands, must have led to affairs of honor. In the opposite corner of the room things went much more quietly. Here they only spoke in whispers, as is customary at chess. "Sun of my life, now you can see of what a wounded heart is capable! Who other than a man made a very fool by his love would be paying visits at such a time?" "Then you have not fled, in the political chaos, from the capital?" "I? It is my element, in which I live as a fish does in water. It is my natural element. There has not been a change of sovereign throughout Europe at which I have not assisted. When Mars armed himself for the battle-field I was the Mercury who bore his message. It is in order to win your smile that I have rent a career in sunder, have thrust a princely crown from me." "And if I do not smile?" "I should go mad." "Oh, you are going back on your words! The last time we met you vowed you were mad for love of me; and now are you only beginning to take precaution against it?" "Every day I begin to get mad afresh." "That proves that every day your madness is cured." "Does not my presence here prove that I am incurable?" "It was only the snow-storm that brought you here." "The storm befriended me! It gave me the right to come." "Oh, our house is always open to guests." "Our house! What torture in those two words!" "Shall I say, 'My husband's house'?" "That is preferable! That manner of speaking in the plural only beseems kings, not even queens." "Russian women are no queens; they serve a praiseworthy custom of antiquity." "But your province is to make slaves." "I have heard tell that the Turks once conquered a citadel which they had been permitted to enter as guests. Do you not perceive that you are misusing the rights of hospitality?" "Show me by one look that my presence here is obnoxious to you, and neither storm nor night will exist for me. I will have my horses put to, and, despite snow-drifts, despite the howling of wolves, I will set out on my way."