After a
while, when the first dazed feeling had passed, I could see their
faces plainly through my mask, and I knew that I could hold them;
for they ceased to lift their glasses, and stood watching me,
sometimes so silent that I could hear their breathing only,
sometimes making a great applause, which passed into silence again
quickly. Once, as I wheeled, I caught the eyes of Jamond watching
me closely. The Intendant never stirred from his seat, and scarcely
moved, but kept his eyes fixed on me. Nor did he applaud. There was
something painful in his immovability.
"I saw it all as in a dream, yet I did see it, and I was resolute to
triumph over the wicked designs of base and abandoned men. I feared
that my knowledge and power to hold them might stop before help
came. Once, in a slight pause, when a great noise of their hands
and a rattling of scabbards on the table gave me a short respite,
some one--Captain Lancy, I think--snatched up a glass, and called
on all to drink my health.
"'Jamond! Jamond!' was the cry, and they drank; the Intendant
himself standing up, and touching the glass to his lips, then
sitting down again, silent and immovable as before. One gentleman,
a nephew of the Chevalier de la Darante, came swaying towards
me with a glass of wine, begging me in a flippant courtesy to
drink; but I waved him back, and the Intendant said most curtly,
'Monsieur de la Darante will remember my injunction.
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