"We must make no mistakes. The foil held lightly—so, so! If you grasp it too strongly you will not feel the other's blade. That is better. 'T is the fingers direct the point. Thy hand a little higher—so, so!"
They fenced before the pupils came and in the intervals when none was on hand. François was tireless.
It was June now, and Robespierre was the public prosecutor, with Pétion at his side. Gamel read aloud the announcement with a coldly stern face. François heard it with indifference.
"Tiens!" he cried. "What matters it? Dame!" as he lunged at the wall, "I do believe my arm is an inch longer." He was thinking, as he tried over and over a new guard, of what a queer education he had had. Gamel walked away into his own room. He was a man who often liked to be alone. Apt to be monosyllabic with his pupils, he could at times become seriously talkative at night over a pipe and a glass. François began to like him, and to suspect that he in turn was liked—a matter not indifferent to this poor devil, who had himself an undeveloped talent for affection.
"Mon ami, Toto! Let us think. I might have been a priest. What an escape! Or a great chorister. That is another matter. A thief, a street-dog, a juggler, a maître d'escrime. Parbleu! What next? We are getting up in the world. My palm, little rascal? Thou wouldst read it. Ah, bad dog, not I! Let us to bed; come along. It seems too good to last."
XII
In which Toto is seen to change his politics twice a day—the mornings and the afternoons quarrel—In which Jean Pierre André Amar, "le farouche," appears.
The fencing-master took great pains with his promising débutant, and now at last thought he could trust him to give lessons. He gave him much advice, full of good sense. He must dress simply, not in any marked fashion. And here were the two cockades, and two for Toto, who was fitted with a toy sword, and had been taught to howl horribly if François said, "Citizen Capet," and to do the like if he cried, "Aristocrat!"
François, gay and a little anxious, followed Gamel for the first time during the lesson-hours into the salle d'armes. Toto came after them in full rig, with a cap and a huge white cockade. A dozen gentlemen, most of them young, were preparing to fence.
The poodle was greeted with "Bravo!" and strutted about on his hind legs with evident enjoyment of the approval.