It is a fiction short story book, Andrea de Mancini sprawled, ingloriously drunk, upon the floor. His legs were thrust under the table, and his head rested against the chair from which he had slipped; his long black hair was tossed and dishevelled; his handsome, boyish face flushed and garbed in the vacant expression of idiocy. "I beg a thousand pardons, M. de Luynes", quoth he in the thick, monotonous voice of a man whose brain but ill controls his tongue, "I beg a thousand pardons for the unseemly poverty of our repast. 'T is no fault of mine. My Lord Cardinal keeps a most unworthy table for me. Faugh! Uncle Giulio is a Hebrew if not by birth, by instinct. He carries his purse strings in a knot which it would break his heart to unfasten. But there! some day my Lord Cardinal will go to heaven to the lap of Abraham. I shall be rich then, vastly rich, and I shall bid you to a banquet worthy of your most noble blood. The Cardinal's health perdition have him for the niggardliest rogue unhung!" I pushed back my chair and rose. The conversation was taking a turn that was too unhealthy to be pursued within the walls of the Palais Mazarin, where there existed, albeit the law books made no reference to it, the heinous crime of lèse Eminence a crime for which more men had been broken than it pleases me to dwell on. "Your table, Master Andrea, needs no apology", I answered carelessly. "Your wine, for instance, is beyond praise".
