company. You are getting fat and wheezy. I shall take my time with you
until your fat melts and your lungs pant and wheeze like leaky bellows.
You, de Villehardouin, I have not decided in what manner I shall kill."

And then I saluted Pasquini, and we were at it. Oh, I was minded to be
rarely devilish this night. Quick and brilliant--that was the thing. Nor
was I unmindful of that deceptive moonlight. As with Fortini would I
settle with him if he dared the time attack. If he did not, and quickly,
then I would dare it.

Despite the fret I had put him in, he was cautious. Nevertheless I
compelled the play to be rapid, and in the dim light, depending less than
usual on sight and more than usual on feel, our blades were in continual
touch.

Barely was the first minute of play past when I did the trick. I feigned
a slight slip of the foot, and, in the recovery, feigned loss of touch
with Pasquini's blade. He thrust tentatively, and again I feigned, this
time making a needlessly wide parry. The consequent exposure of myself
was the bait I had purposely dangled to draw him on. And draw him on I
did. Like a flash he took advantage of what he deemed an involuntary
exposure. Straight and true was his thrust, and all his will and body
were heartily in the weight of the lunge he made. And all had been
feigned on my part and I was ready for him. Just lightly did my steel
meet his as our blades slithered. And just firmly enough and no more did
my wrist twist and deflect his blade on my basket hilt. Oh, such a
slight deflection, a matter of inches, just barely sufficient to send his
point past me so that it pierced a fold of my satin doublet in passing.
Of course, his body followed his rapier in the lunge, while, heart-high,
right side, my rapier point met his body. And my outstretched arm was
stiff and straight as the steel into which it elongated, and behind the
arm and the steel my body was braced and solid.

Heart-high, I say, my rapier entered Pasquini's side on the right, but it
did not emerge, on the left, for, well-nigh through him, it met a rib
(oh, man-killing is butcher's work!) with such a will that the forcing
overbalanced him, so that he fell part backward and part sidewise to the
ground. And even as he fell, and ere he struck, with jerk and wrench I
cleared my weapon of him.

De Goncourt was to him, but he waved de Goncourt to attend on me. Not so
swiftly as Fortini did Pasquini pass. He coug