Cocardasse and Passepoil looked horrified at the hunchback’s impertinence, but Lagardere did not seem to be vexed, and answered, quite amiably: "So did I till lately." Then he said, addressing himself generally to the company: "Have any of you ever heard of the thrust of Nevers?"
A tremor of excitement ran through his audience. Cocardasse took up the talk: "We spoke of it but now."
"Well," said Lagardere, "what do you think of it?"
Æsop, the irrepressible, thrust in his opinion. "Never was secret thrust invented that cannot be parried."
Lagardere looked at him somewhat contemptuously. "So I thought till I crossed swords with Nevers. Now I think differently."
Cocardasse whistled. "The devil you do," he commented.
"I will tell you all about it," said Lagardere. "It happened three months ago. That secret thrust piqued me. Then people talked too much about Nevers; that irritated me. Wherever I went, from court to camp, from tavern to palace, the name of Nevers was dinned in my ears. The barber dressed your hair à la Nevers. The tailor cut your coat à la Nevers. Fops carried canes à la Nevers; ladies scented themselves à la Nevers. One day at the inn they served me cutlets à la Nevers. I flung the damned dish out of the window. On the doorstep I met my boot-maker, who offered to sell me a pair of boots à la Nevers. I cuffed the rascal and flung him ten louis as a salve. But the knave only said to me: ’Monsieur de Nevers beat me once, but he gave me a hundred pistoles.’"
Passepoil sighed for the sorrows of his young pupil: "Poor little Parisian!"
Lagardere went on with his tale: "Now I am vainglorious enough to hold that cutlets would taste good if they were cooked à la Lagardere; that coats à la Lagardere would make good wearing, and boots à la Lagardere good walking. I came to the conclusion that Paris was not big enough for the pair of us, and that Nevers was the man to quit the field. Like Æsop yonder, I laughed at the secret thrust."
He paused, and Cocardasse questioned: "But you don’t laugh now?"