ard, right within the
other's guard, thus placing his man so completely at his mercy that, as
if fascinated, the Marquis did not even attempt to recover himself.

This time Andre-Louis did not laugh: He just smiled into the dilating
eyes of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and made no shift to use his advantage.

"Come, come, monsieur!" he bade him sharply. "Am I to run my blade
through an uncovered man?" Deliberately he fell back, whilst his shaken
opponent recovered himself at last.

M. d'Ormesson released the breath which horror had for a moment caught.
Le Chapelier swore softly, muttering:

"Name of a name! It is tempting Providence to play the fool in this
fashion!"

Andre-Louis observed the ashen pallor that now over spread the face of
his opponent.

"I think you begin to realize, monsieur, what Philippe de Vilmorin must
have felt that day at Gavrillac. I desired that you should first do so.
Since that is accomplished, why, here's to make an end."

He went in with lightning rapidity. For a moment his point seemed to La
Tour d'Azyr to be everywhere at once, and then from a low engagement
in sixte, Andre-Louis stretched forward with swift and vigorous ease
to lunge in tierce. He drove his point to transfix his opponent whom
a series of calculated disengages uncovered in that line. But to his
amazement and chagrin, La Tour d'Azyr parried the stroke; infinitely
more to his chagrin La Tour d'Azyr parried it just too late. Had he
completely parried it, all would yet have been well. But striking the
blade in the last fraction of a second, the Marquis deflected the point
from the line of his body, yet not so completely but that a couple
of feet of that hard-driven steel tore through the muscles of his
sword-arm.

To the seconds none of these details had been visible. All that they
had seen had been a swift whirl of flashing blades, and then Andre-Louis
stretched almost to the ground in an upward lunge that had pierced the
Marquis' right arm just below the shoulder.

The sword fell from the suddenly relaxed grip of La Tour d'Azyr's
fingers, which had been rendered powerless, and he stood now disarmed,
his lip in his teeth, his face white, his chest heaving, before his
opponent, who had at once recovered. With the blood-tinged tip of his
sword resting on the ground, Andre-Louis surveyed him grimly, as we
survey the prey that through our own clumsiness has escaped us at the
last moment.

In the Assembly and in the newspape