Unluckily he rose quickly, and, arming himself with a still burning torch, jumped into the passage, where bad luck awaited him. My good master was no longer there; he had taken to his heels. But M. d’Anquetil was still there with Catherine, and he it was who received the burning torch on his forehead, an outrage he could not stand. He drew his sword, and drove it to the hilt in the unlucky knave’s stomach, teaching him, at his own expense, how fatal it may be to attack a gentleman. Now M. Coignard had not got twenty yards away from the house when the other lackey, a tall fellow, with the limbs of a daddy-longlegs, ran after him, shouting for the guard.
“Stop him! Stop him!” The footman ran faster than the abbé, and we could see him, at the corner of the Rue Saint Guillaume, extending his arms to catch M. Coignard by the collar of his gown. But my dear tutor, who had more than one trick, veering abruptly, got behind the fellow, tripped him up, and sent him on to a stone post, where he got his head broken. It was done before M. d’Anquetil and I, running to the abbé’s assistance, could reach him. We could not leave M. Coignard in this pressing danger.
“Abbe,” said M. d’Anquetil, “give me your hand. You’re a gallant man.”
“I really cannot help thinking,” my good master replied, “that I have been somewhat murderously inclined; but I am not cruel enough to be proud of it. I am quite satisfied so long as I am not reproached too vehemently. Such violence does not lie in my habits, and as you can see, sir, I am better fitted to lecture from the chair of a college on belles-lettres than I am to fight with lackeys at the corner of a street.”
“Oh!” replied M. d’Anquetil, “that’s not the worst of the whole business. I fully believe you have knocked the Farmer-general on the head.”
“Is it true?” questioned the abbé.
“As true as that I have perforated with my sword yonder scoundrel’s tripes.”
“Under such circumstances we ought to ask pardon of God, to whom alone we are responsible for the blood shed by us, and secondly to hasten to the nearest fountain, there to wash ourselves, because I perceive that my nose is bleeding.”
“Right you are, abbé,” said M. d’Anquetil; “for the blackguard now dying in the gutter has cut my forehead. What an impertinence!”
“Forgive him,” said the abbé, “as you wish to be forgiven yourself.”