questioned: "But you don’t laugh now?"
Lagardere answered him, gravely: "Not a laugh. I waited for Nevers one evening outside the Louvre and saluted him. ’Sir,’ I said, in my grandest manner, ’I rely upon your courtesy to give me a moonlight lesson in your secret thrust.’ Lord, how he started. ’Who the devil are you?’ says he. I made him a magnificent bow. ’I am Henri de Lagardere, of the king’s Light-Horse. I am always in trouble, always in debt, always in love. These are misfortunes a man can endure. But I am always hearing of your merits, which is fretting, and of your irresistible secret thrust, and that is unbearable.’"
Lagardere paused to give dramatic effect to the point in his narrative.
"What did he say to that?" asked Passepoil.
Lagardere went on: "’Ah,’ said the duke, ’you are the fellow they call handsome Lagardere’" (Lagardere interrupted the flow of his story with a pathetic parenthesis – "I can’t help it, they do call me so"); "’people talk too much about you, and that wearies me’; which shows that he had a touch of my complaint. Well, he was civility itself. We went down by the church of St. – Germain, and had scarcely crossed swords when the point of his rapier pricked me here, just between the eyes. I was touched – I, Lagardere – and if I had not leaped backward I should have been a dead man. ’That is my secret thrust,’ says the duke with a smile, and wished me good-evening."
V
THE PARRY TO THE THRUST OF NEVERS
There was a heavy stillness in the room when Lagardere came to the end of his tale. "This sounds serious," Cocardasse said, gloomily, and those about him were gloomily silent.
Lagardere resumed his story: "I pondered that thrust for a month. At last I mastered it. I tried it on the Baron de Brissac with perfect success."
A general laugh at this remark relieved the tension of the bravos’ nerves. Æsop took advantage of the more cheerful atmosphere again to address Lagardere. "Matchless cavalier," he asked, with a wry assumption of politeness, "would you show me that thrust you esteem so highly?"
Lagardere looked at the speaker with a whimsical smile. "With pleasure," he said, and drew his sword. Æsop did likewise, and while the bravos drew back towards the wall to allow a free space for the lesson the two swordsmen came on guard. Lagardere explained while he fenced, naming each feint and lunge and circle of the complicated attack as he made it. With the last word of his steel-illuminated lecture his sword, that had illustrated the words of the fencer, seemed suddenly to leap forward, a glittering streak of light.
Æsop leaped back with a yell, and clapped his left hand to his forehead. "Damnation!" he cried.
Cocardasse, who had been following the proceedings with the keenest attention, hurried out of the circle of spectators. "Splendid!" he cried. "What is the parry?"
"It is as clear as day," Lagardere answered. "This is how the trick is done," and again, as he spoke, his blade explained his text, gleaming and twisting in the cunning evolutions of the riposte.
Cocardasse, who had drawn his own sword, repeated Lagardere’s words and parodied Lagardere’s gestures faithfully. "I see," he said, and turned to the others, who had lost nothing of the lesson. "Have you caught it, boys? It might serve – "
Lagardere interrupted him, indifferent to the evil appreciation on the faces of the spectators. "It will serve at once. I am going to try it on its master."
"On Nevers?" queried Staupitz, hoarsely.
Lagardere nodded. "On no less a man. I should have told you that I plagued him until he promised me my revenge. When I was exiled I wrote to remind him." Lagardere drew a letter from his breast and held it up for a moment before returning it to its lodging. "In this letter he accepts my challenge, names the time, the place – "
Cocardasse interrupted: "What time?"
"To-night at ten," Lagardere replied.
"The place?" asked Passepoil.
"The moat of Caylus," Lagardere answered. He pointed to the window at which Æsop had been sitting so long. "You can see it from that window."
There was a general look of astonishment on the faces of all the bravos. Passepoil, quick with his Norman caution, glanced at Staupitz and the group about him, and put his finger cautiously to his lips.
Cocardasse was still inquisitive. "Why there?" he questioned.
Lagardere explained, amiably: "Because such is the good duke’s pleasure. When I sent him my cartel I made it plain that I had little time on my hands, as I was anxious, on account of the king’s fire-new zeal against duelling, to cross the frontier as speedily as might be. I knew the duke was staying on his estates near by, and I suggested, with a fine show of gravity, that possibly his highness was acquainted with some quiet place in the neighborhood of the Castle of Caylus where we might settle our little difference. Oh, the words were solemnly couched, but I swear to you that I laughed heartily when I wrote them."
Lagardere laughed again in memory of that former mirth as he made an end of speaking. Cocardasse scratched an ear and glanced at Passepoil. Passepoil scratched an ear and glanced at Cocardasse. The rest of the bravos stared with a sullen curiosity at Lagardere, who paid no heed to their gaze.
"Why did you laugh?" Cocardasse asked, after a short pause.
Lagardere answered him affably: "Because I knew that my allusion to Caylus would fret my excellent enemy. There is, it seems, a beauty hidden in that gloomy castle, Gabrielle de Caylus, whom my duke adores in spite of the ancient feud between the two houses of Caylus and Nevers. It should please him to fight under the eyes of his lady love, whom I can console if I win."
The idea seemed to please Lagardere, for he again began to laugh softly to himself after he had finished speaking. But Cocardasse did not seem to think it was a laughing matter, for his voice was almost solemn as he asked: "Did you speak of the lady in your letter to Nevers?"
Lagardere interrupted his mirth to reply: "Of course. The situation is so humorous. I suggested playfully that there was a lovely princess imprisoned in the castle of a wicked old ogre named Caylus, and I hinted that if things turned out as I hoped, I might be fortunate enough to carry solace and freedom to the captive damsel." He paused for a moment and then asked in wonder: "Why do you pull such long faces?"
For, indeed, the faces of the swashbucklers were almost funereal in their solemnity. Passepoil, relying upon his Norman cunning, took it upon himself to explain a ticklish situation. "It is lucky we are here to help you," he said, knowingly.
Lagardere’s laughter became more pronounced. "To help me?" he cried, and he shook with amusement at the absurdity of the words.
Passepoil insisted: "It’s no laughing matter. Nevers is the lady’s husband."
He spoke with a portentous solemnity against which Lagardere protested, laughing louder than before. "On the contrary, it is more laughable than ever. A secret marriage. A romance. Perhaps I shall have to soothe a widow when I hoped to woo a maid."
"Better have a sword or two to back you," Cocardasse suggested, cunningly.
Lagardere frowned. "No, thank you. I do my own fighting."
Passepoil whispered, insinuatingly: "Could I help to carry off the lady?"
Lagardere’s frown deepened. "No, thank you. I do my own love-making. Clear out
