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My efforts were not wasted Slowly the rape pronounced itself To this influence I added that of such wit as Heaven has graced me with, and by a word here and another there I set myself to lash theirhad for the moment driven it

And so, presently, Good-Humour spread her hter decked our speech, until the noise of our h the open s ht down the rue Saint-Dominique, across the rue de l'Enfer, to the very ears perhaps of those within the Luxe them that Bardelys and his friends kept another of those revels which were become a byword in Paris, and had contributed not a little to the sobriquet of "Magnificent" which reild and were pledged less for the sake of the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grewa moment, like a bird of prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down in the words of that fool La Fosse

"Messieurs," he lisped, with that fatuousness he affected, and with his eye fixed coldly upon Chatellerault, "I have a toast for you" He rose carefully to his feet--he had arrived at that condition in which to move with care is of the first ilass, which stood half eentlemen," he commanded Then, in the silence that ensued, he atteround and one on his chair; but encountering difficulties of balance, he reive you the most peerless, the most beautiful, the most difficult and cold lady in all France I drink to those her thousand graces, of which Fa chare you, too, the shose good fortune it maybe to play Endymion to this Diana

"It will need," pursued La Fosse, who dealt y and classic lore--"it will need an Adonis in beauty, a Mars in valour, an Apollo in song, and a very Eros in love to accoo unaccomplished, since the one man in all France on e have based our hopes has failed Gentleive you the matchless Roxalanne de Lavedan!"