Cocarda.s.se continued: "In twelve you were our master."

Pa.s.sepoil questioned again: "What became of your bully?"

Lagardere was laconic: "We had a chat afterwards. I attended his funeral."

Cocarda.s.se clapped his hands. "Well begun, little Parisian."

Pa.s.sepoil pointed admiringly at Lagardere. "Look at you now, a captain in the king's guard."

Lagardere laughed cheerfully. "Look if you like, but I am no such thing.

I am cashiered, exiled from Paris."

"Why?" asked Cocarda.s.se, and Lagardere replied with a question: "Do you remember the Baron de Brissac?"

Cocarda.s.se nodded. "One of the best swords in Paris."

Lagardere resumed: "Well, the late baron--"

Pa.s.sepoil interrupted: "The late baron?"

Lagardere explained: "Brissac had a lewd tongue and smirched a woman. So I pulled his ears."

Cocarda.s.se grinned. "The devil you did!"

"Yes," said Lagardere, "they were very long and tempting. We resumed the argument elsewhere. It was brief. Good-bye, Brissac! But as the good king, thanks to the good cardinal, now frowns upon duelling, I am exiled when I ought to be rewarded."

Cocarda.s.se sighed. "There is no encouragement for virtue nowadays."

Lagardere's voice was as cheerful as if there were no such thing in the world as exile. "Well, there I was at my wit's end, and my nimble wits found work for me. 'If I must leave France,' I said, 'I will go to Spain, where the spirit of chivalry still reigns.' So I raised a regiment of adventurers like myself--broken gentlemen, ruined spendthrifts, poor devils out at elbow, gallant soldiers of fortune one and all. They wait for me a mile from here. We shall find work to do in Spain or elsewhere.

The world is wide, and it has always work for good swords to do."

Cocarda.s.se looked at him admiringly. "Your sword will never rust for want of use," he said, with approval.

Lagardere answered him, briskly: "Why should it? 'Tis the best friend in the world. What woman's eye ever shone as brightly as its blade, what woman's tongue ever discoursed such sweet music?"

Cocarda.s.se took off his hat and swung it. "Hurrah for the sword!" he shouted.

Lagardere's glance applauded his enthusiasm. "Iron was G.o.d's best gift to man, and he G.o.d's good servant who hammered it into shape and gave it point and edge. I shall never be happy until I am master of it."

aesop joined the conversation mockingly. "I thought you were master of it," he said, with an obvious sneer.

Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil looked horrified at the hunchback's impertinence, but Lagardere did not seem to be vexed, and answered, quite amiably: "So did I till lately." Then he said, addressing himself generally to the company: "Have any of you ever heard of the thrust of Nevers?"

A tremor of excitement ran through his audience. Cocarda.s.se took up the talk: "We spoke of it but now."

"Well," said Lagardere, "what do you think of it?"

aesop, the irrepressible, thrust in his opinion. "Never was secret thrust invented that cannot be parried."

Lagardere looked at him somewhat contemptuously. "So I thought till I crossed swords with Nevers. Now I think differently."

Cocarda.s.se whistled. "The devil you do," he commented.

"I will tell you all about it," said Lagardere. "It happened three months ago. That secret thrust piqued me. Then people talked too much about Nevers; that irritated me. Wherever I went, from court to camp, from tavern to palace, the name of Nevers was dinned in my ears. The barber dressed your hair a la Nevers. The tailor cut your coat a la Nevers.

Fops carried canes a la Nevers; ladies scented themselves a la Nevers.

One day at the inn they served me cutlets a la Nevers. I flung the d.a.m.ned dish out of the window. On the doorstep I met my boot-maker, who offered to sell me a pair of boots a la Nevers. I cuffed the rascal and flung him ten louis as a salve. But the knave only said to me: 'Monsieur de Nevers beat me once, but he gave me a hundred pistoles.'"

Pa.s.sepoil sighed for the sorrows of his young pupil: "Poor little Parisian!"

Lagardere went on with his tale: "Now I am vainglorious enough to hold that cutlets would taste good if they were cooked a la Lagardere; that coats a la Lagardere would make good wearing, and boots a la Lagardere good walking. I came to the conclusion that Paris was not big enough for the pair of us, and that Nevers was the man to quit the field. Like aesop yonder, I laughed at the secret thrust."

He paused, and Cocarda.s.se 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 Pa.s.sepoil.

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 p.r.i.c.ked 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," Cocarda.s.se 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. aesop took advantage of the more cheerful atmosphere again to address Lagardere. "Matchless cavalier," he asked, with a wry a.s.sumption 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. aesop did likewise, and while the bravos drew back towards the wall to allow a free s.p.a.ce 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 ill.u.s.trated the words of the fencer, seemed suddenly to leap forward, a glittering streak of light.

aesop leaped back with a yell, and clapped his left hand to his forehead.

"d.a.m.nation!" he cried.

Cocarda.s.se, 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.

Cocarda.s.se, 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--"