'Diable! take care, monsieur, or I am through you—my sword is like a spit in the king's kitchen. Peste! take time, fellow—Death himself could not be more impatient than you. A devil of a thrust that—our little flash in the pan is really becoming quite serious!'
I pressed so close upon him, that once the bowl-hilts of our swords touched and rung; but at a moment, when this gay chevalier, who treated my fencing with such coolness and contempt, slipped his left foot, and consequently raised his guard a little, I lunged furiously within, and drove my sword nearly to the cross guard through his ribs on the right side.
Poor wretch! he uttered a sound something between a sob and a cry, while instinctively I drew back my blade to parry the return his hand could never give me now. His eyes glared and closed, the sword dropped from his fingers, and, deluged in blood, he sunk upon the causeway.
I found myself face to face with a dying man, and this cooled us all.
'Monsieur,' said his companion, hurriedly, 'we have been to blame; you are a stranger, fly!'
'Whither?' I asked, wildly; 'I have already lost my way.'
'Morbleu! you will find it soon enough; to the Bastille, if the watch overtake you!'
This dreadful word Bastille gave me fresh resolution.
'Away, away, monsieur!' gasped the wounded man, half choked in his blood; 'take this ring—' he struggled to get it off his finger; 'oh, Monseigneur le Prince, give him this—my ring; the lieutenant of the watch is my friend—away! I have known a man branded with the fleur de lys, and broken alive on the wheel, for less than this.'
'If taken, show the ring of the chevalier to the lieutenant, and you will be allowed to pass.'