Frison fell back at that almost as if I had struck him, and I turned to my adversary, who had been awaiting my motions with impatience. God knows he did look young as he stood with his head bare and his fair hair drooping over his smooth woman's forehead--a mere lad fresh from the college of Burgundy, if they have such a thing in England. I felt a sudden chill as I looked at him: a qualm, a tremor, a presentiment. What was it the little tailor had said? That I should--but there, he did not know. What did he know of such things? If I let this pass I must kill a man a day, or leave Paris and the eating-house, and starve.
'A thousand pardons,' I said gravely, as I drew and took my place. 'A dun. I am sorry that the poor devil caught me so inopportunely. Now however, I am at your service.'
He saluted and we crossed swords and began. But from the first I had no doubt what the result would be. The slippery stones and fading light gave him, it is true, some chance, some advantage, more than he deserved; but I had no sooner felt his blade than I knew that he was no swordsman. Possibly he had taken half-a-dozen lessons in rapier art, and practised what he learned with an Englishman as heavy and awkward as himself. But that was all.
He made a few wild clumsy rushes, parrying widely. When I had foiled these, the danger was over, and I held him at my mercy.
I played with him a little while, watching the sweat gather on his brow and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and darker, like the shadow of doom, on his face. Not out of cruelty --God knows I have never erred in that direction!--but because, for the first time in my life, I felt a strange reluctance to strike the blow. The curls clung to his forehead; his breath came and went in gasps; I heard the men behind me and one or two of them drop an oath; and then I slipped--slipped, and was down in a moment on my right side, my elbow striking the pavement so sharply that the arm grew numb to the wrist.
He held off. I heard a dozen voices cry, 'Now! now you have him!' But he held off. He stood back and waited with his breast heaving and his point lowered, until I had risen and stood again. on my guard.
'Enough! enough!' a rough voice behind me cried. 'Don't hurt the man after that.'
'On guard, sir!' I answered coldly--for he seemed to waver, and be in doubt. 'It was an accident. It shall not avail you again.'
Several voices cried 'Shame!' and one, 'You coward!' But the Englishman stepped forward, a fixed look in his blue eyes. He took his place without a word. I read in his drawn white face that he had made up his mind to the worst, and his courage so won my admiration that I would gladly and thankfully have set one of the lookers-on--any of the lookers-on--in his place; but that could not be. So I thought of Zaton's closed to me, of Pombal's insult, of the sneers and slights I had long kept at the sword's point; and, pressing him suddenly in a heat of affected anger, I thrust strongly over his guard, which had grown feeble, and ran him through the chest.
When I saw him lying, laid out on the stones with his eyes half shut, and his face glimmering white in the dusk--not that I saw him thus long, for there were a dozen kneeling round him in a twinkling--I felt an unwonted pang. It passed, however, in a moment. For I found myself confronted by a ring of angry faces --of men who, keeping at a distance, hissed and cursed and threatened me, calling me Black Death and the like.
They were mostly canaille, who had gathered during the fight, and had viewed all that passed from the farther side of the railings.
While some snarled and raged at me like wolves, calling me 'Butcher!' and 'Cut-throat!' or cried out that Berault was at his trade again, others threatened me with the vengeance of the Cardinal, flung the edict in my teeth, and said with glee that the guard were coming--they would see me hanged yet.
'His blood is on your head!' one cried furiously. 'He will be dead in an hour. And you will swing for him! Hurrah!'
'Begone,' I said.
'Ay, to Montfaucon,' he answered, mocking me.
'No; to your kennel!' I replied, with a look which sent him a yard backwards, though the railings were between us. And I wiped my blade carefully, standing a little apart. For--well, I could understand it--it was one of those moments when a man is not popular. Those who had come with me from the eating-house eyed me askance, and turned their backs when I drew nearer; and those who had joined us and obtained admission were scarcely more polite.
But I was not to be outdone in SANG FROID. I cocked my hat, and drawing my cloak over my shoulders, went out with a swagger which drove the curs from the gate before I came within a dozen paces of it. The rascals outside fell back as quickly, and in a moment I was in the street. Another moment and I should have been clear of the place and free to lie by for a while--when, without warning, a scurry took place round me. The crowd fled every way into the gloom, and in a hand-turn a dozen of the Cardinal's guards closed round me.
I had some acquaintance with the officer in command, and he saluted me civilly.
'This is a bad business, M. de Berault,' he said. 'The man is dead they tell me.'
'Neither dying nor dead,' I answered lightly. 'If that be all you may go home again.'
'With you,' he replied, with a grin, 'certainly. And as it rains, the sooner the better. I must ask you for your sword, I am afraid.'
'Take it,' I said, with the philosophy which never deserts me.
'But the man will not die.'
'I hope that may avail you,' he answered in a tone I did not like. 'Left wheel, my friends! To the Chatelet! March!'
'There are worse places,' I said, and resigned myself to fate.
After all, I had been in a prison before, and learned that only one jail lets no prisoner escape.
