Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution

by Rafael Sabatini

  CHAPTER I. TRANSITION

  "You may agree," wrote Andre-Louis from Paris to Le Chapelier, in aletter which survives, "that it is to be regretted I should definitelyhave discarded the livery of Scaramouche, since clearly there could beno livery fitter for my wear. It seems to be my part always to stir upstrife and then to slip away before I am caught in the crash of thewarring elements I have aroused. It is a humiliating reflection. I seekconsolation in the reminder of Epictetus (do you ever read Epictetus?)that we are but actors in a play of such a part as it may please theDirector to assign us. It does not, however, console me to have beencast for a part so contemptible, to find myself excelling ever in theart of running away. But if I am not brave, at least I am prudent; sothat where I lack one virtue I may lay claim to possessing anotheralmost to excess. On a previous occasion they wanted to hang me forsedition. Should I have stayed to be hanged? This time they may want tohang me for several things, including murder; for I do not know whetherthat scoundrel Binet be alive or dead from the dose of lead I pumpedinto his fat paunch. Nor can I say that I very greatly care. If I have ahope at all in the matter it is that he is dead--and damned. But I amreally indifferent. My own concerns are troubling me enough. I have allbut spent the little money that I contrived to conceal about me before Ifled from Nantes on that dreadful night; and both of the only twoprofessions of which I can claim to know anything--the law and thestage--are closed to me, since I cannot find employment in either withoutrevealing myself as a fellow who is urgently wanted by the hangman. Asthings are it is very possible that I may die of hunger, especiallyconsidering the present price of victuals in this ravenous city. Again Ihave recourse to Epictetus for comfort. 'It is better,' he says, 'to dieof hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with atroubled spirit amid abundance.' I seem likely to perish in the estatethat he accounts so enviable. That it does not seem exactly enviable tome merely proves that as a Stoic I am not a success."

  There is also another letter of his written at about the same timeto the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr--a letter since published by M. EmileQuersac in his "Undercurrents of the Revolution in Brittany," unearthedby him from the archives of Rennes, to which it had been consigned byM. de Lesdiguieres, who had received it for justiciary purposes from theMarquis.

  "The Paris newspapers," he writes in this, "which have reported inconsiderable detail the fracas at the Theatre Feydau and disclosed thetrue identity of the Scaramouche who provoked it, inform me also thatyou have escaped the fate I had intended for you when I raised thatstorm of public opinion and public indignation. I would not have youtake satisfaction in the thought that I regret your escape. I do not. Irejoice in it. To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that thevictim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died,had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in thethought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, butin torment of mind should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure thathell hereafter is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be acertainty in this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhilethat you may taste something of its bitterness.

  "You murdered Philippe de Vilmorin because you feared what you describedas his very dangerous gift of eloquence, I took an oath that day thatyour evil deed should be fruitless; that I would render it so; that thevoice you had done murder to stifle should in spite of that ring likea trumpet through the land. That was my conception of revenge. Do yourealize how I have been fulfilling it, how I shall continue to fulfilit as occasion offers? In the speech with which I fired the people ofRennes on the very morrow of that deed, did you not hear the voice ofPhilippe de Vilmorin uttering the ideas that were his with a fire and apassion greater than he could have commanded because Nemesis lent meher inflaming aid? In the voice of Omnes Omnibus at Nantes my voiceagain--demanding the petition that sounded the knell of your hopes ofcoercing the Third Estate, did you not hear again the voice of Philippede Vilmorin? Did you not reflect that it was the mind of the man you hadmurdered, resurrected in me his surviving friend, which made necessaryyour futile attempt under arms last January, wherein your order, finallybeaten, was driven to seek sanctuary in the Cordelier Convent? Andthat night when from the stage of the Feydau you were denounced to thepeople, did you not hear yet again, in the voice of Scaramouche, thevoice of Philippe de Vilmorin, using that dangerous gift of eloquencewhich you so foolishly imagined you could silence with a sword-thrust?It is becoming a persecution--is it not?--this voice from the grave thatinsists upon making itself heard, that will not rest until you have beencast into the pit. You will be regretting by now that you did not killme too, as I invited you on that occasion. I can picture to myselfthe bitterness of this regret, and I contemplate it with satisfaction.Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul caninhabit, particularly such a soul as yours. It is because of this thatI am glad to know that you survived the riot at the Feydau, although atthe time it was no part of my intention that you should. Because of thisI am content that you should live to enrage and suffer in the shadow ofyour evil deed, knowing at last--since you had not hitherto the wit todiscern it for yourself--that the voice of Philippe de Vilmorin willfollow you to denounce you ever more loudly, ever more insistently,until having lived in dread you shall go down in blood under the justrage which your victim's dangerous gift of eloquence is kindling againstyou."

  I find it odd that he should have omitted from this letter all mentionof Mlle. Binet, and I am disposed to account it at least a partialinsincerity that he should have assigned entirely to his self-imposedmission, and not at all to his lacerated feelings in the matter ofClimene, the action which he had taken at the Feydau.

  Those two letters, both written in April of that year 1789, had for onlyimmediate effect to increase the activity with which Andre-Louis Moreauwas being sought.

  Le Chapelier would have found him so as to lend him assistance, tourge upon him once again that he should take up a political career. Theelectors of Nantes would have found him--at least, they would havefound Omnes Omnibus, of whose identity with himself they were still inignorance--on each of the several occasions when a vacancy occurred intheir body. And the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr and M. de Lesdiguiereswould have found him that they might send him to the gallows.

  With a purpose no less vindictive was he being sought by M. Binet, nowunhappily recovered from his wound to face completest ruin. His troupehad deserted him during his illness, and reconstituted under thedirection of Polichinelle it was now striving with tolerable success tocontinue upon the lines which Andre-Louis had laid down. M. le Marquis,prevented by the riot from expressing in person to Mlle. Binet hispurpose of making an end of their relations, had been constrained towrite to her to that effect from Azyr a few days later. He tempered theblow by enclosing in discharge of all liabilities a bill on the Caissed'Escompte for a hundred louis. Nevertheless it almost crushed theunfortunate and it enabled her father when he recovered to enrage herby pointing out that she owed this turn of events to the prematuresurrender she had made in defiance of his sound worldly advice. Fatherand daughter alike were left to assign the Marquis' desertion, naturallyenough, to the riot at the Feydau. They laid that with the rest to theaccount of Scaramouche, and were forced in bitterness to admit that thescoundrel had taken a superlative revenge. Climene may even have cometo consider that it would have paid her better to have run a straightcourse with Scaramouche and by marrying him to have trusted to hisundoubted talents to place her on the summit to which her ambitionurged her, and to which it was now futile for her to aspire. If so, thatreflection must have been her sufficient punishment. For, as Andre-Louisso truly says, there is no worse hell than that provided by the regretsfor wasted opportunities.

  Meanwhile the fiercely sought Andre-Louis Moreau had gone to earthcompletely for the present. And the brisk police of Paris, urged on bythe King's Lieutenant from Rennes, hunted for him in vain. Yet he mighthave been found in a house in the Rue du Hasard
within a stone's throwof the Palais Royal, whither purest chance had conducted him.

  That which in his letter to Le Chapelier he represents as a contingencyof the near future was, in fact, the case in which already he foundhimself. He was destitute. His money was exhausted, including thatprocured by the sale of such articles of adornment as were not ofabsolute necessity.

  So desperate was his case that strolling one gusty April morning downthe Rue du Hasard with his nose in the wind looking for what might bepicked up, he stopped to read a notice outside the door of a house onthe left side of the street as you approach the Rue de Richelieu. Therewas no reason why he should have gone down the Rue du Hasard. Perhapsits name attracted him, as appropriate to his case.

  The notice written in a big round hand announced that a young man ofgood address with some knowledge of swordsmanship was required by M.Bertrand des Amis on the second floor. Above this notice was a blackoblong board, and on this a shield, which in vulgar terms may bedescribed as red charged with two swords crossed and four fleurs de lys,one in each angle of the saltire. Under the shield, in letters of gold,ran the legend:

  BERTRAND DES AMIS

  Maitre en fait d'Armes des Academies du Roi

  Andre-Louis stood considering. He could claim, he thought, to possessthe qualifications demanded. He was certainly young and he believed oftolerable address, whilst the fencing-lessons he had received in Nanteshad given him at least an elementary knowledge of swordsmanship. Thenotice looked as if it had been pinned there some days ago, suggestingthat applicants for the post were not very numerous. In that caseperhaps M. Bertrand des Amis would not be too exigent. And anyway,Andre-Louis had not eaten for four-and-twenty hours, and whilst theemployment here offered--the precise nature of which he was yet toascertain--did not appear to be such as Andre-Louis would deliberatelyhave chosen, he was in no case now to be fastidious.

  Then, too, he liked the name of Bertrand des Amis. It felicitouslycombined suggestions of chivalry and friendliness. Also the man'sprofession being of a kind that is flavoured with romance it waspossible that M. Bertrand des Amis would not ask too many questions.

  In the end he climbed to the second floor. On the landing he pausedoutside a door, on which was written "Academy of M. Bertrand desAmis." He pushed this open, and found himself in a sparsely furnished,untenanted antechamber. From a room beyond, the door of which wasclosed, came the stamping of feet, the click and slither of steel uponsteel, and dominating these sounds a vibrant sonorous voice speaking alanguage that was certainly French; but such French as is never heardoutside a fencing-school.

  "Coulez! Mais, coulez donc!.... So! Now the flanconnade--en carte.... Andhere is the riposte.... Let us begin again. Come! The ward of fierce....Make the coupe, and then the quinte par dessus les armes.... O, maisallongez! Allongez! Allez au fond!" the voice cried in expostulation."Come, that was better." The blades ceased.

  "Remember: the hand in pronation, the elbow not too far out. That willdo for to-day. On Wednesday we shall see you tirer au mur. It is moredeliberate. Speed will follow when the mechanism of the movements ismore assured."

  Another voice murmured in answer. The steps moved aside. The lesson wasat an end. Andre-Louis tapped on the door.

  It was opened by a tall, slender, gracefully proportioned man of perhapsforty. Black silk breeches and stockings ending in light shoes clothedhim from the waist down. Above he was encased to the chin in a closelyfitting plastron of leather, His face was aquiline and swarthy, his eyesfull and dark, his mouth firm and his clubbed hair was of a lustrousblack with here and there a thread of silver showing.

  In the crook of his left arm he carried a fencing-mask, a thing ofleather with a wire grating to protect the eyes. His keen glance playedover Andre-Louis from head to foot.

  "Monsieur?" he inquired, politely.

  It was clear that he mistook Andre-Louis' quality, which is notsurprising, for despite his sadly reduced fortunes, his exterior wasirreproachable, and M. des Amis was not to guess that he carried uponhis back the whole of his possessions.

  "You have a notice below, monsieur," he said, and from the swiftlighting of the fencing-master's eyes he saw that he had been correctin his assumption that applicants for the position had not been jostlingone another on his threshold. And then that flash of satisfaction wasfollowed by a look of surprise.

  "You are come in regard to that?"

  Andre-Louis shrugged and half smiled. "One must live," said he.

  "But come in. Sit down there. I shall be at your.... I shall be free toattend to you in a moment."

  Andre-Louis took a seat on the bench ranged against one of thewhitewashed walls. The room was long and low, its floor entirely bare.Plain wooden forms such as that which he occupied were placed here andthere against the wall. These last were plastered with fencing trophies,masks, crossed foils, stuffed plastrons, and a variety of swords,daggers, and targets, belonging to a variety of ages and countries.There was also a portrait of an obese, big-nosed gentleman in anelaborately curled wig, wearing the blue ribbon of the Saint Esprit,in whom Andre-Louis recognized the King. And there was a framedparchment--M. des Amis' certificate from the King's Academy. A bookcaseoccupied one corner, and near this, facing the last of the four windowsthat abundantly lighted the long room, there was a small writing-tableand an armchair. A plump and beautifully dressed young gentleman stoodby this table in the act of resuming coat and wig. M. des Amis saunteredover to him--moving, thought Andre-Louis, with extraordinary grace andelasticity--and stood in talk with him whilst also assisting him tocomplete his toilet.

  At last the young gentleman took his departure, mopping himself witha fine kerchief that left a trail of perfume on the air. M. des Amisclosed the door, and turned to the applicant, who rose at once.

  "Where have you studied?" quoth the fencing-master abruptly.

  "Studied?" Andre-Louis was taken aback by the question. "Oh, at Louis LeGrand."

  M. des Amis frowned, looking up sharply as if to see whether hisapplicant was taking the liberty of amusing himself.

  "In Heaven's name! I am not asking you where you did your humanities,but in what academy you studied fencing."

  "Oh--fencing!" It had hardly ever occurred to Andre-Louis that the swordranked seriously as a study. "I never studied it very much. I had somelessons in... in the country once."

  The master's eyebrows went up. "But then?" he cried. "Why trouble tocome up two flights of stairs?" He was impatient.

  "The notice does not demand a high degree of proficiency. If I am notproficient enough, yet knowing the rudiments I can easily improve. Ilearn most things readily," Andre-Louis commended himself. "For therest: I possess the other qualifications. I am young, as you observe:and I leave you to judge whether I am wrong in assuming that my addressis good. I am by profession a man of the robe, though I realize that themotto here is cedat toga armis."

  M. des Amis smiled approvingly. Undoubtedly the young man had a goodaddress, and a certain readiness of wit, it would appear. He ran acritical eye over his physical points. "What is your name?" he asked.

  Andre-Louis hesitated a moment. "Andre-Louis," he said.

  The dark, keen eyes conned him more searchingly.

  "Well? Andre-Louis what?"

  "Just Andre-Louis. Louis is my surname."

  "Oh! An odd surname. You come from Brittany by your accent. Why did youleave it?"

  "To save my skin," he answered, without reflecting. And then made hasteto cover the blunder. "I have an enemy," he explained.

  M. des Amis frowned, stroking his square chin. "You ran away?"

  "You may say so.

  "A coward, eh?"

  "I don't think so." And then he lied romantically. Surely a man wholived by the sword should have a weakness for the romantic. "You see, myenemy is a swordsman of great strength--the best blade in the province,if not the best blade in France. That is his repute. I thought I wouldcome to Paris to learn something of the art, and then go back a
nd killhim. That, to be frank, is why your notice attracted me. You see, I havenot the means to take lessons otherwise. I thought to find work here inthe law. But I have failed. There are too many lawyers in Paris as itis, and whilst waiting I have consumed the little money that I had, sothat... so that, enfin, your notice seemed to me something to which aspecial providence had directed me."

  M. des Amis gripped him by the shoulders, and looked into his face.

  "Is this true, my friend?" he asked.

  "Not a word of it," said Andre-Louis, wrecking his chances on anirresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn't wreck them.M. des Amis burst into laughter; and having laughed his fill, confessedhimself charmed by his applicant's fundamental honesty.

  "Take off your coat," he said, "and let us see what you can do. Nature,at least, designed you for a swordsman. You are light, active, andsupple, with a good length of arm, and you seem intelligent. I may makesomething of you, teach you enough for my purpose, which is that youshould give the elements of the art to new pupils before I take them inhand to finish them. Let us try. Take that mask and foil, and come overhere."

  He led him to the end of the room, where the bare floor was scored withlines of chalk to guide the beginner in the management of his feet.

  At the end of a ten minutes' bout, M. des Amis offered him thesituation, and explained it. In addition to imparting the rudimentsof the art to beginners, he was to brush out the fencing-room everymorning, keep the foils furbished, assist the gentlemen who came forlessons to dress and undress, and make himself generally useful. Hiswages for the present were to be forty livres a month, and he mightsleep in an alcove behind the fencing-room if he had no other lodging.

  The position, you see, had its humiliations. But, if Andre-Louis wouldhope to dine, he must begin by eating his pride as an hors d'oeuvre.

  "And so," he said, controlling a grimace, "the robe yields not only tothe sword, but to the broom as well. Be it so. I stay."

  It is characteristic of him that, having made that choice, he shouldhave thrown himself into the work with enthusiasm. It was ever his wayto do whatever he did with all the resources of his mind and energiesof his body. When he was not instructing very young gentlemen inthe elements of the art, showing them the elaborate and intricatesalute--which with a few days' hard practice he had mastered toperfection--and the eight guards, he was himself hard at work on thosesame guards, exercising eye, wrist, and knees.

  Perceiving his enthusiasm, and seeing the obvious possibilities itopened out of turning him into a really effective assistant, M. des Amispresently took him more seriously in hand.

  "Your application and zeal, my friend, are deserving of more than fortylivres a month," the master informed him at the end of a week. "Forthe present, however, I will make up what else I consider due to you byimparting to you secrets of this noble art. Your future depends uponhow you profit by your exceptional good fortune in receiving instructionfrom me."

  Thereafter every morning before the opening of the academy, the masterwould fence for half an hour with his new assistant. Under this reallyexcellent tuition Andre-Louis improved at a rate that both astoundedand flattered M. des Amis. He would have been less flattered and moreastounded had he known that at least half the secret of Andre-Louis'amazing progress lay in the fact that he was devouring the contents ofthe master's library, which was made up of a dozen or so treatises onfencing by such great masters as La Bessiere, Danet, and the syndicof the King's Academy, Augustin Rousseau. To M. des Amis, whoseswordsmanship was all based on practice and not at all on theory, whowas indeed no theorist or student in any sense, that little librarywas merely a suitable adjunct to a fencing-academy, a proper piece ofdecorative furniture. The books themselves meant nothing to him in anyother sense. He had not the type of mind that could have read them withprofit nor could he understand that another should do so. Andre-Louis,on the contrary, a man with the habit of study, with the acquiredfaculty of learning from books, read those works with enormous profit,kept their precepts in mind, critically set off those of one masteragainst those of another, and made for himself a choice which heproceeded to put into practice.

  At the end of a month it suddenly dawned upon M. des Amis that hisassistant had developed into a fencer of very considerable force, a manin a bout with whom it became necessary to exert himself if he were toescape defeat.

  "I said from the first," he told him one day, "that Nature designed youfor a swordsman. See how justified I was, and see also how well I haveknown how to mould the material with which Nature has equipped you."

  "To the master be the glory," said Andre-Louis.

  His relations with M. des Amis had meanwhile become of the friendliest,and he was now beginning to receive from him other pupils than merebeginners. In fact Andre-Louis was becoming an assistant in a muchfuller sense of the word. M. des Amis, a chivalrous, open-handed fellow,far from taking advantage of what he had guessed to be the young man'sdifficulties, rewarded his zeal by increasing his wages to four louis amonth.

  From the earnest and thoughtful study of the theories of others, itfollowed now--as not uncommonly happens--that Andre-Louis came to developtheories of his own. He lay one June morning on his little truckle bedin the alcove behind the academy, considering a passage that he had readlast night in Danet on double and triple feints. It had seemed to himwhen reading it that Danet had stopped short on the threshold of a greatdiscovery in the art of fencing. Essentially a theorist, Andre-Louisperceived the theory suggested, which Danet himself in suggesting ithad not perceived. He lay now on his back, surveying the cracks in theceiling and considering this matter further with the lucidity that earlymorning often brings to an acute intelligence. You are to remember thatfor close upon two months now the sword had been Andre-Louis' dailyexercise and almost hourly thought. Protracted concentration uponthe subject was giving him an extraordinary penetration of vision.Swordsmanship as he learnt and taught and saw it daily practisedconsisted of a series of attacks and parries, a series of disengagesfrom one line into another. But always a limited series. A half-dozendisengages on either side was, strictly speaking, usually as far as anyengagement went. Then one recommenced. But even so, these disengageswere fortuitous. What if from first to last they should be calculated?

  That was part of the thought--one of the two legs on which his theory wasto stand; the other was: what would happen if one so elaborated Danet'sideas on the triple feint as to merge them into a series of actualcalculated disengages to culminate at the fourth or fifth or even sixthdisengage? That is to say, if one were to make a series of attacksinviting ripostes again to be countered, each of which was not intendedto go home, but simply to play the opponent's blade into a line thatmust open him ultimately, and as predetermined, for an irresistiblelunge. Each counter of the opponent's would have to be preconsidered inthis widening of his guard, a widening so gradual that he should himselfbe unconscious of it, and throughout intent upon getting home his ownpoint on one of those counters.

  Andre-Louis had been in his time a chess-player of some force, and atchess he had excelled by virtue of his capacity for thinking ahead. Thatvirtue applied to fencing should all but revolutionize the art. Itwas so applied already, of course, but only in an elementary and verylimited fashion, in mere feints, single, double, or triple. But even thetriple feint should be a clumsy device compared with this method uponwhich he theorized.

  He considered further, and the conviction grew that he held the key of adiscovery. He was impatient to put his theory to the test.

  That morning he was given a pupil of some force, against whom usuallyhe was hard put to it to defend himself. Coming on guard, he made up hismind to hit him on the fourth disengage, predetermining the four passesthat should lead up to it. They engaged in tierce, and Andre-Louisled the attack by a beat and a straightening of the arm. Came thedemi-contre he expected, which he promptly countered by a thrust inquinte; this being countered again, he reentered still lower, and beingagain correctly parried, as
he had calculated, he lunged swirling hispoint into carte, and got home full upon his opponent's breast. The easeof it surprised him.

  They began again. This time he resolved to go in on the fifth disengage,and in on that he went with the same ease. Then, complicating the matterfurther, he decided to try the sixth, and worked out in his mind thecombination of the five preliminary engages. Yet again he succeeded aseasily as before.

  The young gentleman opposed to him laughed with just a tinge ofmortification in his voice.

  "I am all to pieces this morning," he said.

  "You are not of your usual force," Andre-Louis politely agreed. And thengreatly daring, always to test that theory of his to the uttermost: "Somuch so," he added, "that I could almost be sure of hitting you as andwhen I declare."

  The capable pupil looked at him with a half-sneer. "Ah, that, no," saidhe.

  "Let us try. On the fourth disengage I shall touch you. Allons! Engarde!"

  And as he promised, so it happened.

  The young gentleman who, hitherto, had held no great opinion ofAndre-Louis' swordsmanship, accounting him well enough for purposes ofpractice when the master was otherwise engaged, opened wide his eyes. Ina burst of mingled generosity and intoxication, Andre-Louis was almostfor disclosing his method--a method which a little later was to become acommonplace of the fencing-rooms. Betimes he checked himself. To revealhis secret would be to destroy the prestige that must accrue to him fromexercising it.

  At noon, the academy being empty, M. des Amis called Andre-Louis to oneof the occasional lessons which he still received. And for the firsttime in all his experience with Andre-Louis, M. des Amis receivedfrom him a full hit in the course of the first bout. He laughed, wellpleased, like the generous fellow he was.

  "Aha! You are improving very fast, my friend." He still laughed, thoughnot so well pleased, when he was hit in the second bout. After that hesettled down to fight in earnest with the result that Andre-Louiswas hit three times in succession. The speed and accuracy of thefencing-master when fully exerting himself disconcerted Andre-Louis'theory, which for want of being exercised in practice still demanded toomuch consideration.

  But that his theory was sound he accounted fully established, and withthat, for the moment, he was content. It remained only to perfect bypractice the application of it. To this he now devoted himself withthe passionate enthusiasm of the discoverer. He confined himself to ahalf-dozen combinations, which he practised assiduously until each hadbecome almost automatic. And he proved their infallibility upon the bestamong M. des Amis' pupils.

  Finally, a week or so after that last bout of his with des Amis, themaster called him once more to practice.

  Hit again in the first bout, the master set himself to exert all hisskill against his assistant. But to-day it availed him nothing beforeAndre-Louis' impetuous attacks.

  After the third hit, M. des Amis stepped back and pulled off his mask.

  "What's this?" he asked. He was pale, and his dark brows were contractedin a frown. Not in years had he been so wounded in his self-love. "Haveyou been taught a secret botte?"

  He had always boasted that he knew too much about the sword to believeany nonsense about secret bottes; but this performance of Andre-Louis'had shaken his convictions on that score.

  "No," said Andre-Louis. "I have been working hard; and it happens that Ifence with my brains."

  "So I perceive. Well, well, I think I have taught you enough, my friend.I have no intention of having an assistant who is superior to myself."

  "Little danger of that," said Andre-Louis, smiling pleasantly. "You havebeen fencing hard all morning, and you are tired, whilst I, havingdone little, am entirely fresh. That is the only secret of my momentarysuccess."

  His tact and the fundamental good-nature of M. des Amis prevented thematter from going farther along the road it was almost threateningto take. And thereafter, when they fenced together, Andre-Louis, whocontinued daily to perfect his theory into an almost infallible system,saw to it that M. des Amis always scored against him at least two hitsfor every one of his own. So much he would grant to discretion, but nomore. He desired that M. des Amis should be conscious of his strength,without, however, discovering so much of its real extent as would haveexcited in him an unnecessary degree of jealousy.

  And so well did he contrive that whilst he became ever of greaterassistance to the master--for his style and general fencing, too, hadmaterially improved--he was also a source of pride to him as the mostbrilliant of all the pupils that had ever passed through his academy.Never did Andre-Louis disillusion him by revealing the fact that hisskill was due far more to M. des Amis' library and his own mother witthan to any lessons received.