It was a critical moment. To do anything with the wild and lawless, it needs to show one's self as fierce and fearless as themselves. My sword was out in an instant; and knowing that sometimes a display of daring courage, with men like those amongst whom I was placed, will touch the only feelings that remain in their seared and blackened hearts, and do more with them than any other earthly quality, I cried out to my two retainers, who were hurrying to separate us, "Let him alone! let him alone!--We are man to man. I only ask fair play."
"Fair play! Give him fair play!" cried Combalet and his companion to half a dozen ruffians that came rushing down the stairs at the noise. "Give the Count fair play!"
"It's a quarrel about a lady!" cried Jacques Mocqueur. "An affair of honour! A duello! Let no one interrupt them."
In the meanwhile my antagonist lunged at me with vain fury. He was not unskilful in the use of his weapon, but his was what may be called bravo-fencing, very well calculated for street brawls, where five or six persons are engaged together, but not fit to be opposed to a really good swordsman, calmly hand to hand. His traverses were loose, and he bore hard against my blade, so that at last, suddenly shifting my point, I deceived him with a half time, and not willing exactly to kill him, brought him down with a severe wound in his shoulder.
"Quarter for Goguenard! Quarter for Goguenard!" cried the respectable spectators, several of whom had, during the combat, served me essentially by withholding Madame Marinette (the beldame whose caresses I had repulsed so unceremoniously) from exercising her talons upon my face. My sword was instantly sheathed, and my antagonist being raised, looked at me with a grim grin, but without any apparent malice. "You've sliced my bacon," cried he; "but, Ventre saint gris! you are a tight hand, and I forgive you."
The wounded man was now carried off to have his wound puttied, as he expressed it; and I was then ushered up stairs into a large room, wherein all the swash-bucklers, that the noise of clashing swords had brought out like a swarm of wasps when their nest is disturbed, now hastened to take their seats round a large table that occupied the centre of the hall. In place of the pens, the ink-horns, and the paper, which grace the more dignified council boards of more modern nations, that of the worthy Huns was only covered, in imitation of their ancestors, with swords and pistols, daggers and knives, bottles, glasses, and flagons, symbolical of the spirit in which their laws were conceived, and the sharpness with which they were enforced.
At the head of the table, when we entered, were seated four or five of the sager members of the council, who had not suffered their attention to be called from their deliberations like the rest; and in a great arm-chair raised above the rest was placed a small old man, with sharp grey eyes, a keen pinched nose, and a look of the most infallible cunning I ever beheld in mortal countenance. He wore his hat buttoned with a large jewel, and was very splendidly attired in black velvet; so that, from every circumstance of his appearance, I was inclined to believe I beheld in him that very powerful and politic monarch called the King of the Huns.
As Combalet de Carignan and Jacques Mocqueur were leading me forward in state to present me to the monarch, he rose, and stroking his short grey beard from the root to the point between his finger and thumb, he demanded, with an air of dignity, "What noise was that I heard but now, and who dared to draw a sword within the precincts of our royal palace?"
This question was answered by Jacques Mocqueur with the following delectable sentence:--"May it please your majesty, the case was, that old Marinette did the sweet upon the Count here, who buffed her a swagger that earthed her marrow-bones; whereupon mutton-faced Goguenard aired his pinking-iron upon the count, and would have made his chanter gape, if the Count had not sliced his bacon, and brought him to kiss his mother."
This explanation, however unintelligible to me at the time, seemed perfectly satisfactory to the great potentate to whom it was addressed; who, nodding to me with a gracious inclination, replied, "The Count most justly punished an aggression upon the person of an ambassador. Let our secretary propose the oaths to the count, our cupbearer bring forward our solemn goblet, and let the worthy nobleman take the oaths, and be naturalized a true and faithful Hun."