wild, angry rush that should
afford me an easy opportunity of gaining my ends with him. Not so,
however. Now that he came with steel to defend his life and to seek
mine, he appeared to have realized the importance of having keen wits to
guide his hand; and so he put his anger from him, and emerged calm and
determined from his whilom disorder.

Some preliminary passes we made from the first engagement in the lines
of tierce, each playing warily for an opening, yet neither of us giving
ground or betraying haste or excitement. Now his blade slithered on
mine with a ceaseless tremor; his eyes watched mine from under lowering
brows, and with knees bent he crouched like a cat making ready for a
spring. Then it came. Sudden as lightning was his disengage; he
darted under my guard, then over it, then back and under it again, and
stretching out in the lunge--his double-feint completed--he straightened
his arm to drive home the botte.

But with a flying point I cleared his blade out of the line of my
body. There had been two sharp tinkles of our meeting swords, and now
Chatellerault stood at his fullest stretch, the half of his steel past
and behind me, for just a fraction of time completely at my mercy. Yet
I was content to stand, and never move my blade from his until he had
recovered and we were back in our first position once again.

I heard the deep bass of Castelroux's "Mordieux!" the sharp gasp of
fear from Saint-Eustache, who already in imagination beheld his friend
stretched lifeless on the ground, and the cry of mortification from La
Fosse as the Count recovered. But I heeded these things little. As
I have said, to kill the Count was not my object. It had been wise,
perhaps, in Chatellerault to have appreciated that fact; but he did not.
From the manner in which he now proceeded to press me, I was assured
that he set his having recovered guard to slowness on my part, never
thinking of the speed that had been necessary to win myself such an
opening as I had obtained.

My failure to run him through in that moment of jeopardy inspired
him with a contempt of my swordplay. This he now made plain by the
recklessness with which he fenced, in his haste to have done ere we
might chance to be interrupted. Of this recklessness I suddenly availed
myself to make an attempt at disarming him. I turned aside a vicious
thrust by a close--a dangerously close--parry, and whilst in the act of
encircling his blade I sought by pressure t