e are too many lawyers in Paris as it
is, and whilst waiting I have consumed the little money that I had, so
that... so that, enfin, your notice seemed to me something to which a
special providence had directed me."

M. des Amis gripped him by the shoulders, and looked into his face.

"Is this true, my friend?" he asked.

"Not a word of it," said Andre-Louis, wrecking his chances on an
irresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn't wreck them.
M. des Amis burst into laughter; and having laughed his fill, confessed
himself charmed by his applicant's fundamental honesty.

"Take off your coat," he said, "and let us see what you can do. Nature,
at least, designed you for a swordsman. You are light, active, and
supple, with a good length of arm, and you seem intelligent. I may make
something of you, teach you enough for my purpose, which is that you
should give the elements of the art to new pupils before I take them in
hand to finish them. Let us try. Take that mask and foil, and come over
here."

He led him to the end of the room, where the bare floor was scored with
lines of chalk to guide the beginner in the management of his feet.

At the end of a ten minutes' bout, M. des Amis offered him the
situation, and explained it. In addition to imparting the rudiments
of the art to beginners, he was to brush out the fencing-room every
morning, keep the foils furbished, assist the gentlemen who came for
lessons to dress and undress, and make himself generally useful. His
wages for the present were to be forty livres a month, and he might
sleep in an alcove behind the fencing-room if he had no other lodging.

The position, you see, had its humiliations. But, if Andre-Louis would
hope to dine, he must begin by eating his pride as an hors d'oeuvre.

"And so," he said, controlling a grimace, "the robe yields not only to
the sword, but to the broom as well. Be it so. I stay."

It is characteristic of him that, having made that choice, he should
have thrown himself into the work with enthusiasm. It was ever his way
to do whatever he did with all the resources of his mind and energies
of his body. When he was not instructing very young gentlemen in
the elements of the art, showing them the elaborate and intricate
salute--which with a few days' hard practice he had mastered to
perfection--and the eight guards, he was himself hard at work on those
same guards, exercising eye, wrist, and knees.

Perceiving his enthus