“I have not made, nor do I intend making, any explanation.”

“Monsieur,” began De Clameran.

“Allow me to finish, if you please.  If, unintentionally, I have offended the wife of a man whom I highly esteem, it is his business to seek redress, and not yours.  Perhaps you will tell me he is too old to demand satisfaction:  if so, let him send one of his sons.  I saw one of them in the ball-room to-night; let him come.  You asked me who I am; in return I ask you who are you—­you who undertake to act as Mme. Fauvel’s champion?  Are you her relative, friend, or ally?  What right have you to insult her by pretending to discover an allusion to her in a play invented for amusement?”

There was nothing to be said in reply to this.  M. de Clameran sought a means of escape.

“I am a friend of M. Fauvel,” he said, “and this title gives me the right to be as jealous of his reputation as if it were my own.  If this is not a sufficient reason for my interference, I must inform you that his family will shortly be mine:  I regard myself as his nephew.”

“Ah!”

“Next week, monsieur, my marriage with Madeleine will be publicly announced.”

This news was so unexpected, so startling that for a moment the clown was dumb; and now his surprise was genuine.

But he soon recovered himself, and, bowing with deference, said, with covert irony: 

“Permit me to offer my congratulations, monsieur.  Besides being the belle to-night, Mlle. Madeleine is worth, I hear, half a million.”

Raoul de Lagors had anxiously been watching the people near them, to see if they overheard this conversation.

“We have had enough of this gossip,” he said, in a disdainful tone; “I will only say one thing more, master clown, and that is, that your tongue is too long.”

“Perhaps it is, my pretty youth, perhaps it is; but my arm is still longer.”

De Clameran here interrupted them by saying: 

“It is impossible for one to seek an explanation from a man who conceals his identity under the guise of a fool.”

“You are at liberty, my lord doge, to ask the master of the house who I am—­if you dare.”

“You are,” cried Clameran, “you are—­”

A warning look from Raoul checked the forge-master from using an epithet which would have led to an affray, or at least a scandalous scene.

The clown stood by with a sardonic smile, and, after a moment’s silence, stared M. de Clameran steadily in the face, and in measured tones said: 

“I was the best friend, monsieur, that your brother Gaston ever had.  I was his adviser, and the confidant of his last wishes.”

These few words fell like a clap of thunder upon De Clameran.

He turned deadly pale, and stared back with his hands stretched out before him, as if shrinking from a phantom.

He tried to answer, to protest against this assertion, but the words froze on his lips.  His fright was pitiable.