ou about so pleasantly just now. I should have been a
mountebank to this day but for an accident."

Passepoil was curious. "What accident?" he asked.

Lagardere answered him: "A brawl over a wench with a bully. I challenged
him, though I was more at home with a toasting-fork than a sword. I
caught up an unfamiliar weapon, but he nicked the steel from my hand at a
pass and banged me with the flat of his blade. The girl laughed. The
bully grinned. I swore to learn swordcraft."

"And you did," said Passepoil. "In six months you were our best pupil."

Cocardasse continued: "In twelve you were our master."

Passepoil questioned again: "What became of your bully?"

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

Cocardasse clapped his hands. "Well begun, little Parisian."

Passepoil 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 Cocardasse, and Lagardere replied with a question: "Do you
remember the Baron de Brissac?"

Cocardasse nodded. "One of the best swords in Paris."

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

Passepoil interrupted: "The late baron?"

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

Cocardasse 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."

Cocardasse 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."

Cocardasse 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 t