I straightway sprang to my feet, flinging off his hands, crying to him to let me be, or ill would follow, and laying hand upon and half drawing my sword.
"What, pepper-box!" cried M. de Rondiniacque, "what, will you quarrel for nothing? Nay," he went on, with a great laugh, "do but see it ruffle! Come, boy, take your hand from your sword, or I will take the sword from you."
By this, between his tone of contempt and my own fear that I made but a sorry figure, I was trembling with anger no longer simulated; when, on my making wholly to disengage my sword, the Frenchman did pounce upon me with the swiftness of a hawk, catching my wrists, one in each of his hands, in a grasp that seemed of iron. I would have wrenched them free, but found each struggle to that end did bruise and pinch my poor flesh worse than the last. Being very near the point of tears, while yet in my heart raging with anger, I called aloud on Captain Royston, who, to my good fortune, did enter the room even as I called.
"Heyday!" he cried, "what 's the matter? Do not hurt the boy, Godemar," he went on, when drawing near he saw how I struggled to free my hands.
M. de Rondiniacque laughed again as he let me go. "The little fool hurts himself with striving," he said. "Had I not held him, he had run me through with the pretty sword the Prince did give him. Mon Dieu! he is anxious to flesh it."
"How is this, Master——?" says Captain Royston, mighty sternly, till checked for lack of a name to give me,—"on my life, I know not how you are called."
Now this was a question I had no wish to answer without some previous consideration; so, knowing I could scarce keep out of my voice the sound of tears, the pain of whose coming was now some minutes clutching at my throat, I resolved to use them as cover to my disregarding his enquiry.
"He has hurt my hands," I said, with a little sob, rubbing my wrists the while in the manner of a spoiled and petulant child.
"What, baby!" he cried; "I give you a friend to cheer you with his good heart and ready wit, and you must needs fall a-wrangling with him; and then, because he would curb your childish passion, must you weep like a very boy unbreeched?"
"I do not weep," I said; yet could I not check the next sob and some few tears that fell for the pain I had had.