There was one trick he performed which I often recall, with such wonder did it fill me. He took from a scabbard which he kept under his eye in the chimney corner, a long, fine, and tapering Italian rapier, which he declared was the most perfect and poetic thing of man’s invention. With no other weapon than this, he met my own sword in such a fashion that, heavy as it was, it seemed but as a lath before it. Indeed I, its wielder, was unable to make the least advance therewith; and to my amazement, with the might of his arm and this thin piece of steel, he urged me before him all over the room. Afterwards he rolled up the sleeve of his doublet with an air of pride, and showed the contour of that enormous limb. “Yet, Master Miguel,” said he, “it is not brute strength that makes the man you behold. It is the deftness of the fingers in conjunction with the brain’s agility.” By the time my lesson was concluded the sweat had sprung from every pore, and I was breathing heavily. On the contrary, the Englishman, who had exerted himself not less greatly, was untroubled in any particular, save that of the throat, an inconvenience, however, which in his case seemed to be of a permanent character. “These exercises,” said he, “I perform every day to keep the limbs supple and the wrists responsive. Sometimes, if I feel especially valiant, I place an apple or an onion upon the head of the old bull frog of an innkeeper, and slice it in four quarters with my broadsword, and to observe him quake as if he had the ague is the most delectable sight. He is forever thinking that my honest blade will proceed too far, and cleave through his mind; and I conceive it to be my duty to assure him that he does well to show this concern, for sometimes accidents have been known to occur.” He then offered very courteously to perform a like action to an apple placed upon my own head. This, however, I declined with a courtesy which I hope was not less than his own. Sir Richard Pendragon, having drunk copiously of his favourite beverage out of his favourite cup, and having insisted that I should follow his example, said,-- “Master Miguel, in what part of the globe do you intend to adventure to-morrow with your noble eight crowns? They will not bear you above a thousand leagues; fortune does not grow on the bushes, according to all that I have heard about it; your stomach is too proud to take service with one who has the blood of kings flowing under his doublet; so it would seem that unless you bring your chaste mind to the nicking of purses and the cutting of throats, your body will starve.” “God forbid, sir! I have devices of my own. I mind me of one of the finest and most sententious of my father’s precepts.” “Not of swordsmanship, I trust?” “No, sir, of conduct.” “Not of conduct of the sword, Master Miguel Jesus Maria de Sarda y Boegas--how I love the sound of that name!--if I may put the question?”