sinuatingly: "Could I help to carry off the
lady?"

Lagardere's frown deepened. "No, thank you. I do my own love-making.
Clear out and leave me alone. That is all I want of you, my friends."

Cocardasse sighed. "I'd do anything in the world to oblige you, but--" He
paused and looked helplessly at his former pupil, whom his faltering
speech, his hesitating manner began to anger.

"But what?" said Lagardere, sharply.

Cocardasse made an apologetic gesture. "Every man to his trade. We also
are waiting for some one."

Lagardere raised his eyebrows. "Indeed, and that some one?"

The bravos looked at one another uneasily, trying to seem devil-may-care
and failing wofully. Nobody appeared to want to speak. At last Passepoil
spoke. "That some one is Louis de Nevers," he said, and wished heartily
that he did not have to say it.

Lagardere at first appeared to be puzzled by the answer. Then the full
meaning of it seemed to fall upon him like a blow, and his face blazed at
the insult. "Nevers! You! Ah, this is an ambuscade, and I have sat at
drink with assassins!"

Cocardasse protested: "Come, captain, come."

Lagardere's only answer was to spring back clear of the nearest swordsmen
and to draw his sword again. The bravos gathered together angrily about
Staupitz, buzzing like irritated bees.

Lagardere flung his comely head back, and his bright eyes flamed with a
royal rage. His words came quick and clear in his anger: "It was for this
you sought to learn Nevers's thrust, and I--Oh, it would make the gods
laugh to think that I taught it to you! You have the best of the joke so
far, excellent assassins, but if any one of you touches a hair of
Nevers's head he will find that the joke is two-edged, like my sword. If
Nevers must die, it shall be in honorable battle and by my hands, but not
by yours, while Lagardere lives."

AEsop commented, sneeringly: "Lagardere is not immortal."

Staupitz grunted, angrily: "Shall one man dictate to nine?" and made an
appealing gesture to his comrades, inciting them against their censor.

Lagardere faced their menaces with the contemptuous indifference with
which a mastiff might have faced as many rats. He commanded, imperiously:
"Pack off, the whole gang of you, and leave Nevers to me!"

The bravos still buzzed and grumbled: Cocardasse rubbed his chin
thoughtfully; Passepoil pinched his long nose. The situation was becoming
critical. Lagardere was Lagardere, but he was only one man,