My efforts were not wasted. Slowly the mellowing influence of the
grape pronounced itself. To this influence I added that of such
wit as Heaven has graced me with, and by a word here and another
there I set myself to lash their mood back into the joviality out
of which his coming had for the moment driven it.
And so, presently, Good-Humour spread her mantle over us anew, and
quip and jest and laughter decked our speech, until the noise of
our merry-making drifting out through the open windows must have
been borne upon the breeze of that August night down the rue
Saint-Dominique, across the rue de l'Enfer, to the very ears perhaps
of those within the Luxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his
friends kept another of those revels which were become a byword in
Paris, and had contributed not a little to the sobriquet of
"Magnificent" which men gave me.
But, later, as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the
sake of the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew
more barbed and less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a
moment, like a bird of prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down
in the words of that fool La Fosse.
"Messieurs," he lisped, with that fatuousness he affected, and with
his eye fixed coldly upon Chatellerault, "I have a toast for you."
He rose carefully to his feet - he had arrived at that condition in
which to move with care is of the first importance. He shifted his
eye from the Count to his glass, which stood half empty.
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