e
lawyers, and saw her no more.

The death of des Amis left him with so profound a sense of loneliness
and desolation that he had no thought or care for the sudden access
of fortune which it automatically procured him. 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 never was there a season in which
fencing-academies knew such prosperity as in these troubled days, when
every man was sharpening his sword and schooling himself in the uses of
it.

It was not until a couple of weeks later that Andre-Louis realized what
had really happened to him, and he found himself at the same time an
exhausted man, for during that fortnight he had been doing the work of
two. If he had not hit upon the happy expedient of pairing-off his
more advanced pupils to fence with each other, himself standing by to
criticize, correct and otherwise instruct, he must have found the task
utterly beyond his strength. Even so, it was necessary for him to fence
some six hours daily, and every day he brought arrears of lassitude
from yesterday until he was in danger of succumbing under the increasing
burden of fatigue. In the end he took an assistant to deal with
beginners, who gave the hardest work. He found him readily enough
by good fortune in one of his own pupils named Le Duc. As the summer
advanced, and the concourse of pupils steadily increased, it became
necessary for him to take yet another assistant--an able young instructor
named Galoche--and another room on the floor above.

They were strenuous days for Andre-Louis, more strenuous than he had
ever known, even when he had been at work to build up the Binet Company;
but it follows that they were days of extraordinary prosperity. He
comments regretfully upon the fact that Bertrand des Amis should
have died by ill-chance on the very eve of so profitable a vogue of
sword-play.

The arms of the Academie du Roi, to which Andre-Louis had no title,
still continued to be displayed outside his door. He had overcome the
difficulty in a manner worthy of Scaramouche. He left the escutcheon and
the legend "Academie de Bertrand des Amis, Maitre en fait d'Armes des
Academies du Roi," appending to it the further legend: "Conducte