it the field. Like AEsop
yonder, I laughed at the secret thrust."

He paused, and Cocardasse questioned: "But you don't laugh now?"

Lagardere answered him, gravely: "Not a laugh. I waited for Nevers one
evening outside the Louvre and saluted him. 'Sir,' I said, in my grandest
manner, 'I rely upon your courtesy to give me a moonlight lesson in your
secret thrust.' Lord, how he started. 'Who the devil are you?' says he. I
made him a magnificent bow. 'I am Henri de Lagardere, of the king's
Light-Horse. I am always in trouble, always in debt, always in love.
These are misfortunes a man can endure. But I am always hearing of your
merits, which is fretting, and of your irresistible secret thrust, and
that is unbearable.'"

Lagardere paused to give dramatic effect to the point in his narrative.

"What did he say to that?" asked Passepoil.

Lagardere went on: "'Ah,' said the duke, 'you are the fellow they call
handsome Lagardere'" (Lagardere interrupted the flow of his story with a
pathetic parenthesis--"I can't help it, they do call me so"); "'people
talk too much about you, and that wearies me'; which shows that he had a
touch of my complaint. Well, he was civility itself. We went down by the
church of St.-Germain, and had scarcely crossed swords when the point of
his rapier pricked me here, just between the eyes. I was touched--I,
Lagardere--and if I had not leaped backward I should have been a dead
man. 'That is my secret thrust,' says the duke with a smile, and wished
me good-evening."

V

THE PARRY TO THE THRUST OF NEVERS

There was a heavy stillness in the room when Lagardere came to the end of
his tale. "This sounds serious," Cocardasse said, gloomily, and those
about him were gloomily silent.

Lagardere resumed his story: "I pondered that thrust for a month. At last
I mastered it. I tried it on the Baron de Brissac with perfect success."

A general laugh at this remark relieved the tension of the bravos'
nerves. AEsop took advantage of the more cheerful atmosphere again to
address Lagardere. "Matchless cavalier," he asked, with a wry assumption
of politeness, "would you show me that thrust you esteem so highly?"

Lagardere looked at the speaker with a whimsical smile. "With pleasure,"
he said, and drew his sword. AEsop did likewise, and while the bravos drew
back towards the wall to allow a free space for the lesson the two
swordsmen came on guard. Lagardere explained while he fenced, naming each