Le Prun poured out a glass of cold water and drank it. Blassemare observed, as he did so, that his hand trembled violently. The fermier-general was silent, and his flippant Mercury did not care just then to hazard any experiment upon his temper. "Blassemare!" he exclaimed, abruptly arresting his glass, and eyeing his companion with a sort of brutal rage, "I ought to run you through the body, sir, where you stand, for your accursed perfidy." "What! _me?_--by my soul, sir, I don't understand you," he replied, at once offended and amazed. "Why the devil should you murder me?" "You have broken your word with me!" "In what respect?" "Exactly where it was most vitally needful to keep it, sir." "Deuce take me if I know what you mean." "You do--you _do_--a thousand curses! You _must_ know it." "But hang me if I do." "You have suffered that _calumny_ to reach her ears." "What calumny?" "She must have seen her." "_Her!_--whom?" "She must have spoken with her." "Do say, plainly, what it _is_ all about?" "About that--that d---- woman; there, is _that_ intelligible? She is at large, sir, in spite of all I've said--in spite of all you undertook, sir; and she has been filling my wife's ears with those hell-born lies that have been whispered to _you_, sir, and which it was your business to have suppressed and extinguished. By ----, Blassemare, you deserve my curses and my vengeance." As he concluded, he struck the glass upon the table with a force that shivered it to pieces. "Monsieur le Prun," said Blassemare, coolly, "I deprecate no man's vengeance, and fear no man's sword; but whatever be the ground of your present convictions, it is utterly fallacious. The person in question has never stirred abroad--you mean the _sister_ of course--since your marriage, except under close and trustworthy attendance; and the other--_that_ you know is out of the question." "There has been mismanagement somewhere, or else some new device of infernal malice; I say the thing has been misconducted, with the same cursed blundering that has always attended that affair; and I would rather my wife were in her coffin than have seen what I have seen to-night." "What! in her coffin!" echoed Blassemare, with a sort of fiendish satire. "Ay, sir, in her coffin!" said Le Prun, with a black defiance which made Blassemare shrug his shoulders and become silent. The chill and the smell of death seemed to him to have come with these words into the room. But he would not on any account have betrayed his sensations; on the contrary, he pointed gayly to the cards, and looked a smiling interrogatory towards the fermier. But that excellent gentleman was in no mood for picquet. He declined the challenge gloomily and peremptorily.