"
I lay back in my chair and stared at him. Was this, then, another suitor
of Yvonne de Canaples, and were all men mad with love of her?
Presently he continued:
"When I heard that St. Auban was in Paris, having apparently abandoned all
hope in connection with Mademoiselle, I obtained a letter from M. de la
Rochefoucauld--who is an intimate friend of mine--and armed with this I set
out. As luck would have it I got embroiled in the streets of Blois with a
couple of cardinalist gentlemen, who chose to be offended by lampoon of the
Fronde that I was humming. I am not a patient man, and I am even
indiscreet in moments of choler. I ended by crying, "Down with Mazarin and
all his creatures," and I would of a certainty have had my throat slit, had
not a slight and elegant gentleman interposed, and, exercising a wonderful
influence over my assailants, extricated me from my predicament. This
gentleman was the Chevalier de Canaples. He was strangely enough in a mood
to be pleased by an anti-cardinalist ditty, for his rage against Andrea de
Mancini--which he took no pains to conceal--had extended already to the
Cardinal, and from morn till night he did little else but revile the whole
Italian brood--as he chose to dub the Cardinal's family.
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