"Is it for smacking faces ye are?" says he, white with passion. "Then I'll take leave to join in with you!" and with that he sent the table and chairs flying, and I believe that he'd have killed him if some of us hadn't got in between the pair of them and held them apart.
As it was, he tore the Frenchman's coat from his collar to his hip, and the man's shirt looked like an old envelope. But he kept as quiet as ever; and when the landlord had come up, and there was a big crowd around the pair of them, he says quite calmly:
"Monsieur, my name is Eugene Grevin, and I am to be found at the Hôtel Scribe."
"Sir," says my master—and I never saw him look more dignified, "my friend shall call upon you at once."
Suddenly as the thing had been sprung upon me, the end of it was not less sudden. The Frenchman who called himself Grevin bowed to Sir Nicolas, Sir Nicolas bowed to him; and away they both went, the one to fiacre waiting for him, my master to his hotel. But I never saw him more excited, and the way he ordered me about was a thing to hear.
"Hildebrand," said he—and he couldn't rest in one place a minute, "I'll tear the throat of him. It's to him that we owe all this trouble and delay—him and no other."
"Then you know the party, sir?"
"Know him, the paltry scoundrel! and what would
