"It is long past the hour, and I like
punctuality."

A Spaniard at his right hand, swarthy, not ill-looking, whom his friends
called Pepe el Matador, grinned into the German's face.

"Will not this string of swords serve the turn?" he said, and pointed
with a dirty, well-shaped hand to the six long rapiers that hung against
the wall behind them.

The Italian, Faenza, began to laugh a little, quiet, teasing laugh; the
sullen Biscayan, Pinto, patted el Matador on the back; Joel de Jurgan the
Breton, stared stolidly; and Saldagno the Portuguese, refreshed himself
with a drink. Encouraged by what he conceived to be the sympathy of his
comrades, Pepe renewed the attack. "Come, Staupitz, come," he questioned,
"are not those swords long enough and sharp enough to scare the devil?"

Staupitz struck the table again. "No, no, my children," he said, "not for
this job. Monsieur Peyrolles told me to bring nine of my babies, and nine
we must be, and nine we should be at this moment if our truants were at
hand."

At this moment Saldagno set down his beaker. "I hear footsteps," he said.
In the momentary silence which followed this remark, all present could
hear distinctly enough the tramp of feet outside, and in another instant
the door was flung open and the two men whom Staupitz had been expecting
so impatiently made their appearance.

If the contrast had been marked between the six men who sat at the table
and the seventh man who sat apart, the contrast that existed between the
two new-comers was still more striking. The first to enter was a big,
jovial, red-faced, black-haired man with a huge mustache and a manner
that suggested an ebullient admiration of himself and an ebullient
appreciation of all possible pleasures. He was habited much like his
predecessors, in that he was booted, cloaked, hatted, and sworded as they
were booted, cloaked, hatted, and sworded, but everything with him,
owing, it may be, to his flagrant Gascon nationality, tended to an
extravagance of exaggeration that made him seem almost like a caricature
of the others. His hat was bigger, his cloak more voluminous, his boots
more assertive, his sword longer, his taste for colors at once more
pronounced and more gaudy. If the others might be likened in their
coloring to faded wild flowers, this man seemed to blaze like some
monstrous exotic. He was a swashbuckler whom Callot would have loved to
paint.

While he entered the room with his air of splendid a