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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Exactly so," he observed, turning back; "the best way to drown all your cares is to drink a draught of good wine. I am very glad we are going to breakfast in my room. Under those great high vaults in the fencing-school, sitting round a small table, you feel just like mice nibbling a nut in a corner of a big church. Here we are, Fritz. Just listen to the wind whistling through the arrow-slits.
Every man seemed to have his contribution to make to the history of the little Parisian. Faenza was the first to speak. "I met your Lagardere once," he said, "at a fencing-school in Milan, where half a dozen French gentlemen met half a dozen gentlemen of my nationality in a match to test the merits of the French and Italian methods of fence.
In it, he stated that at the fencing-school he had made acquaintance with a young officer, a Monsieur Auguste de Chatenoeuf, that he had mentioned to him that he knew a lady of his name in England; that the officer had asked him what the age of the lady might be, and he had replied.
To the master's sister might fall such wealth as he had amassed, but Andre-Louis succeeded to the mine itself from which that wealth had been extracted, the fencing-school in which by now he was himself so well established as an instructor that its numerous pupils looked to him to carry it forward successfully as its chief.
And then, with another of those strange alternations of behaviour, Cæsar led him and Curio off to inspect the fencing-school; then showed them his favourite horse, pointed out its peculiar toelike hoofs, and related merrily how when it was a young colt, a soothsayer had predicted that its owner would be master of the world, and how he Cæsar, had broken its fiery spirit, and made it perfectly docile, although no other man could ride the beast.
I made up my mind at once to leave him. But I was too weak he had to put me to bed again. The very next morning he came and proposed that I should go into partnership with him. He kept a fencing-school and pistol-gallery. It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was who knows?"
In what fencing-school was the slayer taught her terrible upward blow under the chin? If she learnt it, how is it that her victim, such a past mistress in architecture, such an adept in socialistic polity, has so far learnt no corresponding trick to serve in her own defence?
"'En efet, says the Marky, twiddling his little black mustachios in the chimney-glass, and making a lunge or two as he used to do at the fencing-school. Colonel, you understand that affairs of honour are best settled at once: perhaps it won't be inconvenient to you to arrange our little matters of last night. "'What little matters? says I. 'Do you owe me any money, Marky?
"Perhaps so; but I beg you to remember the Rhine, the Meuse, and our other rivers, even the Marne, Drecht and whatever the smaller streams are called. They remain full and bear stately ships at all seasons of the year. Uniform and reliable is the custom of this country; to-day one way, to-morrow another, is the Italian habit. It's just the same with the blades in the fencing-school."
She did not know what was the matter with her at the time; but soon after she became so ill that she had to take to her bed, and then her doctor discovered the nature of the malady. She did not go to the fencing-school any more after that.
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