It may be - I know now
that it was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault's
description, and were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such
successes as I had had with them in such comedies of love as I had
been engaged upon had given me a false impression. But such at
least was not my opinion that night. I was satisfied that
Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman lived as he
depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I
was accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and
youth and the King's favour could give him; stripped of illusions,
of faith and of zest, the very magnificence - so envied - of my
existence affording me more disgust than satisfaction. Since
already I had gauged its shallows.
Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with
such insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently
to beckon me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?
"Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?" Chatellerault was
gibing, when my silence had endured some moments. "Is the cock that
lately crowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis,
you are accounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce
you to this undertaking?"
I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If
what I did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could
do no less to bolster up my former boasting - or what into boasting
they had translated.
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