“De Moulny, I shall willingly accept your apology—after we have fought. You must understand that the lady of whose bonnet you spoke offensively is my old English governess, once my mother’s dame de compagnie.... If she dried her eyes when she looked at me it must have been because she was thinking of my mother, whom she loved; and—I must have satisfaction for your contempt of those tears.... And—you have refused to fight me because of my birth, you have told me of my mother’s sin, and of the sacrilege committed by my father. Do you not understand that this duel must take place? There can be no one who thinks otherwise here?”
Hector looked about him. There was a sudden buzz from the crowd that said “No one!”
De Moulny said, with his eyes upon the ground: “I understand that I have been a brute and a savage. The meeting shall be where you please. I name my cousin Albert de Moulny for my second, unless he is ashamed to appear for one who has disgraced his name?”
It was so terrible, the bumptious, arrogant de Moulny’s self-abasement, that Hector turned his eyes elsewhere, and even the most callous among the gazers winced at the sight. Albert de Moulny, red and lowering, butted his way to the side of his principal, savagely kicking the shins of those boys who would not move. Hector, catching the alert eye of Pédelaborde, a fat, vivacious, brown-skinned, button-eyed youth who had the School Code of Honor at his stumpy finger-ends, and was known as the best fencer of the Junior Corps, gave him a beckoning nod.
“Sapristi!” panted the nephew of the man of teeth, as he emerged, smiling but rather squeezed, from the press of bodies, “so you are going to give the fat one rhubarb for senna? Ten times I thought you on the point of falling into each other’s arms! I held on to my ears from pure fright!—there has not been an affair of honor amongst the Juniors for three months; we were getting moldy! By-the-way, which of us is to prig the skewers from the Fencing Theater? De Moulny Younger or me? I suggest we toss up. As for de Moulny Elder—he is a bad swordsman—you are better than decent! I say so!... It rests with you to cut his claws and his tail. He is stronger than you.... Saperlipopette! he has the arms of a blacksmith, but there are certain ruses to be employed in such a case—I said ruses, not tricks!—to gain time and tire a long-winded opponent. For example—saisissez-vous—you could stamp upon one of your opponent’s feet during a corps à corps, thus creating a diversion——”
“I am no blackguard ... whatever else I may be!” said his principal sulkily.
“—Or if you felt in need of a rest,” pursued the enthusiast Pédelaborde, “you could catch your point against the edge of de Moulny’s guard, so as to bend it. Then a halt is called for straightening the steel, and meanwhile—you get your second wind. It is very simple! Or—you could permit your sword to fall when his blade beats yours.... De Moulny would never do a thing like that, you say? not so dishonorable! Oh! que si! And I said these devices might be practiced in ease of need—not that they were in good form. For example! You could, if he lunges—and de Moulny’s lunge is a nasty thing!—you could slip and overbalance. Fall to the ground, I mean, point up, so that he gets hit in that big belly of his. It’s an Italian mountebank-trick, I don’t recommend it, French fencing keeps to the high lines. But—tiens, mon œil!—to skewer him like a cockchafer, that would be a lark!”
“Your idea of a lark makes me sick!” broke out Hector, so savagely that Pédelaborde’s jaw dropped and his eyebrows shot towards his hair. Then:
“Messieurs The Pupils! Return To Your Studies!” bellowed the most bull-voiced of the three Sergeants of the Line, appointed to assist the Captain-Commandant in the drilling and disciplining of the young gentlemen of the Junior Corps.
The deafening gallop of three hundred regulation shoes followed as Messieurs the Pupils surged across the parade-ground, mobbed a moment at the wide pillared entrance to the Hall of the Class-Rooms, then foamed, a roaring torrent of boyhood, up the iron-shod staircase into the gallery where the accouterments were racked, the brass-mounted muskets piled with a clattering that woke the echoes in every stone-flagged passage and every high-ceilinged room of the big, raw, draughty building.