Nor did he applaud. There was
something painful in his immovability.
"I saw it all as in a dream, yet I did see it, and I was resolute to
triumph over the wicked designs of base and abandoned men. I feared
that my knowledge and power to hold them might stop before help
came. Once, in a slight pause, when a great noise of their hands
and a rattling of scabbards on the table gave me a short respite,
some one--Captain Lancy, I think--snatched up a glass, and called
on all to drink my health.
"'Jamond! Jamond!' was the cry, and they drank; the Intendant
himself standing up, and touching the glass to his lips, then
sitting down again, silent and immovable as before. One gentleman,
a nephew of the Chevalier de la Darante, came swaying towards
me with a glass of wine, begging me in a flippant courtesy to
drink; but I waved him back, and the Intendant said most curtly,
'Monsieur de la Darante will remember my injunction.'
"Again I danced, and I can not tell you with what anxiety and
desperation--for there must be an end to it before long, and your
peril, Robert, come again, unless these rough fellows changed their
minds.
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