"I did not say I would; I said, perhaps."
Chicot laughed. "I angry!" said he, "at what? Because you are impudent, ignorant, and rude? Oh! my dear monsieur, I have known you too long to be angry at these little imperfections."
"A mission from the king! then you have seen him again?"
"With enthusiasm; he has a memory, king as he is."
"A mission from the king!" stammered Gorenflot.
Gorenflot rose, and seized him by the hand. "Come! let us explain ourselves," said he.
"I! I am the same to-day as on all other days."
"A simple mirror of the people I am with. You laugh, and I laugh; you are rude, so am I."
"Can you not be indulgent to a man who has so much work on his shoulders? Governing this priory is like governing a province: remember, I command two hundred men."
"Ah! it is too much indeed for a servant of God."
"Ah! you are ironical, M. Briquet. Have you lost all your Christian charity? I think you are envious, really."
"Why, you say to yourself, Dom Modeste Gorenflot is rising--he is on the ascending scale."
"While I am on the descending one, I suppose?"
"It is the fault of your false position, M. Briquet."
"M. Gorenflot, do you remember the text, 'He who humbles himself, shall be exalted?'"
"Ah! now he doubts the Holy Writ; the heretic!"
"Heretic, indeed! But what do you mean, M. Briquet?"
"Nothing, but that I set out on a journey, and that I have come to make you my adieux; so, good-by."
"I am no longer Chicot; you reproached me with my false position just now."
"But you must not go without eating; it is not wholesome."
"Badly, here!" murmured the prior, in astonishment.
"You had to complain of your last dinner here?"
"The stuffed ears did not crack under your teeth."
"You said so, did you not? It only remains for you to become a liar."
"Oh! I can put off my business: it was only a lady who asks me to see her."
"No, no! dear M. Chicot, although she has sent me a hundred bottles of Sicilian wine."
"I will not receive her, although she is probably some great lady. I will receive only you."
"To breakfast with you, dear M. Chicot--to repair my wrongs toward you."
"Well! from to-morrow I will join my monks in their exercises."
"Yes; but it will be fatiguing to command."
"No. I gave the order to Brother Borromée."