Better
than that, another time when we were on the coast of Coromandel some
savages gave us I don't know what sort of a mixture of pepper and
vitriol, and that didn't hurt me one bit. I can't make myself drunk."
For some moments past La Faloise's face opposite had excited his
displeasure. He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable
witticisms. La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving very
restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga. But at length he became the
victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his handkerchief, and with
drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again, asked his neighbors about
it, stooped down in order to look under the chairs and the guests' feet.
And when Gaga did her best to quiet him:
"It's a nuisance," he murmured, "my initials and my coronet are worked
in the corner. They may compromise me."
"I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!" shouted Foucarmont,
who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the young man's name
ad infinitum.
But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his ancestry.
He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont's head, and Count de
Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure him that Foucarmont was
a great joker.
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