brought myself to do! Yet, was it so? No, I assured myself, it was
not. A thousand times no! What I had done I had done as much to
win Roxalanne to me as to win her from her own unreasonableness. In
the days to come she should thank me for my harshness, for that which
now she perhaps accounted my unfairness.

Then, again, would I ask myself, was I very sure of this? And so the
two questions were flung the one against the other; my conscience
divided itself into two parties, and they waged a war that filled me
with a depressing uncertainty.

In the end shame was overthrown, and I flung back my head with a
snort of assurance. I was doing no wrong. On the contrary, I was
doing right - both by myself and by Roxalanne. What matter that I
was really cheating her? What matter that I had said I would not
leave Lavedan until I had her promise, whilst in reality I had
hurled my threat at Saint-Eustache that I would meet him at Toulouse,
and passed my word to the Vicomtesse that I would succour her
husband?

I gave no thought to the hidden threat with which Saint-Eustache
had retorted that from Lavedan to Toulouse was a distance of some
twenty leagues. Had he been a man of sterner purposes I might have
been uneasy and on my guard. But Saint-Eustache pshaw!

It is ill to underestimate an enemy, be he never so contemptible,
and for my disdain of the Chevalier I might have paid dearly had
not Fortune - which of late had been practising singular jests upon
me after seemingly abandoning me, returned to my aid at the last
moment.