“Hah! Zat is well,” said the old man. “But you say, bon soir, Miss’r Pammer. Zat is, good night. You intend bon jour; zat is, good day.”
Palmer, seeing the grotesque, good-natured face of the fencing-master smiling at him, and beginning to comprehend what his domestic French had meant, grinned rather foolishly, and turned off. His companion, who stood in his shirtsleeves with a wire-mask already on his face, burst into a rude guffaw at the blunder, and slapped him on the back with a fencing-glove. It may be mentioned here that these young cubs, in process of getting their taste for the wolf’s milk of trade, had come upon the heady wine of Dumas’ “Three Guardsmen”—which admirable romance had so intoxicated their ardent fancy with excited day-dreams of D’Artagnan and Porthos, that, filled with the spirit of the sword, they had resolved to take fencing-lessons of Monsieur Bagasse. This practical recognition of the literary genius of the great French mulatto, was one incident in their joint career. Another, not so creditable, was their participation in a mob of clerks and salesmen, who not long before had brawled down an orator of Dumas’ own color—Frederick Douglass—at the Thompson meeting in Faneuil Hall. It is to be feared that the gallant Alexandre himself would have fared no better at their hands, or their employers’ either, had he ever been fool enough to leave the democratic streets of Paris, for the color-phobic pavements of Boston.
Monsieur Bagasse put away his pipe and spectacles, shuffled across the room to shut the door which the cubs had left open, and returning took down a foil and glove to give the lesson. Fisk was buckling on Palmer’s plastron, as the leathern breastplate is called, an operation rather hindered by his sense of the supercilious smile with which Witherlee regarded his efforts from his chair against the wall, as well as by the circumstance of his having his face incased in the wire mask, and his arms hampered by the heavy leather gloves which he was holding with his elbows against his sides. While Monsieur Bagasse waited, standing in an awkward drooping posture, with the foil in his gloved hand, a firm step was heard bounding up the stairs, the door flew open, and, with a light, springing tread, a young man, flushed and smiling, and so handsome that any one would have turned to look at him, darted in, bringing with him a warm gust of fragrance into the chill musty pallor of the room. An odd, fond smile shot at once to the visage of the fencing-master.
“Ha, good monning, good monning, Missr Wentwort’,” he chirruped, returning with a military salute the quick gesture of gay cordiality the young man made on entering. “How you feel to-day?”
“Capital! most potent, grave and reverend seignior! My very noble and approved good fencing-master, how are you? Hallo, Fernando,” his eye catching sight of the equably-smoking Witherlee: “here you are again, old fellow?”
“Just so, Heliogabalus,” coolly drawled the bilious-cynical youth from his chair. “Say, Heliogabalus—do you know how to get that smell out of your clothes? Bury ’em!”
There was a decided flavor of verjuice in the manner of Witherlee, as he let fly this borrowed jest at the perfumed raiment of the other. Wentworth, though he took it as a jest, could not help wincing a little at it, and was made even more uncomfortable at the application to him of the name of one of the most bestial of the Roman Emperors.
“Well, Fernando,” he returned with a smile, “if ever there was a prickly cactus, you’re one. You’re a perfect Diogenes. Get a tub, Fernando, do.”
“Quarte and tierce, Heliogabalus,” responded the cool Fernando, with his turtle-husky chuckle.
Wentworth turned away, and met the smiling look of admiration and fondness on the upturned visage of the old man-at-arms. A handsome young fellow, in the very flower of youth and May, elegantly dressed—who could look at him without admiration and fondness? An artist—one could have told that at the first glance. Long auburn locks curled in a thick cluster under his dark Rubens hat, and around his florid cheeks. He had a gay, electric, passionate face; bright blue eyes; a fair complexion; red lips, shaded by a light brown moustache coquettishly curled up at the ends, and quick to curve into a proud, brilliant smile. His figure was compact, well-knit, shapely, of middle-height, and seeming taller than it was by force of its gallant carriage. The quality of his face was in his voice—so quick, lively, clear and ringing.