“That’s nothing,” cried the young nobleman. “Waiter, another glass for Captain Allertssohn.”
The fencing-master pushed his chair back from the table, and looking at the broken pieces of greenish glass, said in an altered tone, as if speaking to himself rather than his companions:
“Yes, yes, something serious will happen to-day. Shattered into a thousand pieces. As God wills! I know where my place is.”
Von Warmond filled a fresh glass, saying with a slight shade of reproof in his tone: “Why, Captain, Captain, what whims are these? Before the battle of Brill I fell in jumping out of the boat and broke my sword. I soon found another, but the idea came into my head: ‘you’ll meet your death to-day.’ Yet here I sit, and hope to empty many a beaker with you.”
“It has passed already,” said the fencing-master, raising his hat and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Every one must meet his death-hour, and if mine is approaching to-day—be it as God wills! My family won’t starve. The house on the new Rhine is free from mortgage, and though they don’t inherit much else, I shall leave my children an honest name and trustworthy friends. I know you won’t lose sight of my second boy, the musician, Wilhelm. Nobody is indispensable, and if Heaven wishes to call me from this command, Junker von Nordwyk, Jan Van der Does, can fill my place. You, Herr von Warmond, are in just the right spot, and the good cause will reach a successful end even without me.”
The musician listened with surprise to the softened tone of the strange man’s voice, but the young nobleman raised his drinking-cup, exclaiming:
“Such heavy thoughts for a light glass! You make too much of the matter, Captain. Take your bumper again, and pledge me: Long live the noble art of fencing, and your series: quarte, tierce and side-thrust!”
“They’ll live,” replied Allertssohn, “ay, they’ll live. Many hundreds of noble gentlemen use the sword in this country, and the man who sits here has taught them to wield it according to the rules. My series has served many in duelling, and I, Andreas, their master, have made tierce follow quarte and side-thrust tierce thousands of times, but always with buttons on the foils and against padded doublets. Outside the walls, in the battle-field, no one, often as I have pressed upon the leaders, has ever stood against me in single combat. This Brescian sword-blade has more than once pierced a Spanish jerkin, but the art I teach, gentlemen, the art I love, to which my life has been devoted, I have never practised in earnest. That is hard to bear, gentlemen, and if Heaven is disposed, before calling him away from earth, to grant a poor man, who is no worse than his neighbors, one favor, I shall be permitted to cross blades once in a true, genuine duel, and try my series against an able champion in a mortal struggle. If God would grant Andreas this—”
Before the fencing-master had finished the last sentence, an armed man dashed the door open, shouting: “The light is raised at Leyderdorp!”
At these words Allertssohn sprang from his chair as nimbly as a youth, drew himself up to his full height, adjusted his shoulder-belt and drew down his sash, exclaiming: