“Upon my life, father,” said this worthy man, “I care for nothing. You have been talking for an hour about the Regent's death, and the Duchess of Phalaris, and sly old Fleury, and what not; and I care just as much as if you told me that one of my bauers at Galgenstein had killed a pig; or as if my lacquey, La Rose yonder, had made love to my mistress.”
“Ah, Monsieur l'Abbe!” said La Rose, who was arranging his master's enormous Court periwig, “you are, helas! wrong. Monsieur le Comte will not be angry at my saying that I wish the accusation were true.”
The Count did not take the slightest notice of La Rose's wit, but continued his own complaints.
“I tell you, Abbe, I care for nothing. I lost a thousand guineas t'other night at basset; I wish to my heart I could have been vexed about it. Egad! I remember the day when to lose a hundred made me half mad for a month. Well, next day I had my revenge at dice, and threw thirteen mains. There was some delay; a call for fresh bones, I think; and would you believe it?--I fell asleep with the box in my hand!”
“A desperate case, indeed,” said the Abbe.
“If it had not been for Krahwinkel, I should have been a dead man, that's positive. That pinking him saved me.”
“I make no doubt of it,” said the Abbe. “Had your Excellency not run him through, he, without a doubt, would have done the same for you.”
“Psha! you mistake my words, Monsieur l'Abbe” (yawning). “I mean--what cursed chocolate!--that I was dying for want of excitement. Not that I cared for dying; no, d---- me if I do!”
“WHEN you do, your Excellency means,” said the Abbe, a fat grey-haired Irishman, from the Irlandois College at Paris.
His Excellency did not laugh, nor understand jokes of any kind; he was of an undeviating stupidity, and only replied, “Sir, I mean what I say. I don't care for living: no, nor for dying either; but I can speak as well as another, and I'll thank you not to be correcting my phrases as if I were one of your cursed schoolboys, and not a gentleman of fortune and blood.”
Herewith the Count, who had uttered four sentences about himself (he never spoke of anything else), sunk back on his pillows again, quite exhausted by his eloquence. The Abbe, who had a seat and a table by the bedside, resumed the labours which had brought him into the room in the morning, and busied himself with papers, which occasionally he handed over to his superior for approval.