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You've languished with the girls; you shall have your
chance to drink with Francois Bigot. Now, if you dare, when
we have drunk to the first cockcrow, should you be still on your
feet, you'll fight some one among us, first giving ample cause."
"I hope, your excellency," I replied, with a touch of vanity, "I
have still some stomach and a wrist. I will drink to cockcrow, if
you will. And if my sword prove the stronger, what?"
"There's the point," he said. "Your Englishman loves not fighting
for fighting's sake, Doltaire; he must have bonbons for it. Well,
see: if your sword and stomach prove the stronger, you shall go your
ways to where you will. Voila!"
If I could but have seen a bare portion of the craftiness of this
pair of devils artisans! They both had ends to serve in working ill
to me, and neither was content that I should be shut away in the
citadel, and no more. There was a deeper game playing. I give them
their due: the trap was skillful, and in those times, with great
things at stake, strategy took the place of open fighting here and
there.


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