Alcibiades came very near wounding me two or three times, and if I had not been a most expert fencer, my life would have been in the greatest danger; for his address was quite astonishing and his strength prodigious. He exhausted all the ruses and feints of the trade trying to touch me. Furious at his failure, he uncovered himself two or three times; I declined to take advantage of the opportunity; but he returned to the charge with such desperate, savage fury that I was forced to make the most of such openings as he gave me; and then the clashing of the steel and the whirl of sparks excited and dazzled me. I did not think of death, I was not in the least afraid; that keen, deadly blade that flashed in front of my eyes every second had no more effect on me than if we had been fighting with buttoned foils; but I was, however, indignant at Alcibiades's brutality, and my consciousness of perfect innocence increased my indignation. I determined just to prick him in the arm or shoulder so as to make him drop his sword, for I had tried in vain to knock it out of his hand.--He had a wrist of iron, and the devil himself could not have turned it. At last he came at me with such a sharp, well-directed thrust that I could only half parry it; it passed through my sleeve, and I felt the cold steel against my arm; but I was not wounded. At that I became really angry, and instead of defending myself I assumed the offensive in my turn;--I forgot that he was Rosette's brother, and I rushed at him as if he were my mortal enemy. Taking advantage of a false position of his sword, I delivered a thrust in _quarte_ so well directed that I pierced his side; he made an exclamation and fell back. I thought that he was dead, but he was really only wounded, and his fall was caused by a misstep which he made in trying to parry.--I cannot describe the sensation I felt, Graciosa; certainly it is not difficult to understand that, if you stick a fine, sharp point into the flesh, you will make a hole and blood will flow from it. And yet I was stupefied when I saw the red stream trickling down Alcibiades's doublet.--Of course I did not imagine that bran would come out, as it does when you burst open a doll; but I know that I never was so surprised in my life, and it seemed to me as if something incredible had happened to me. The incredible thing was not, as it seemed to me, that blood should flow from a wound, but that the wound should have been made by me, and that a girl of my age--I was going to write a young man, I have entered so fully into the spirit of my part--should have laid low a lusty captain, an expert in fencing, like Seigneur Alcibiades;--and all for the crime of seduction and refusing to marry a very rich woman, and a very charming one too!