A well-known establishment in a suburb of Paris, in the early part of last century, was the fencing-school of old Pierre Dupré, _maître d'armes_ and retired Major in the French army. Old Pierre was growing somewhat old for the personal exercise of his art, but he could still superintend the practice of his pupils, who fenced with his assistants, and give such advice as they could receive from no other swordsman in all Paris. Of assistants he had four, one a fine young fellow named Karl Havet, the second an equally excellent exponent of the beautiful art he taught, one Georges Maux. The other two helpers were, strange to say, females, strapping fine girls, both, and splendid swordswomen, old Pierre's daughters. How it befel that his girls had become such adepts in their father's profession, and why, are matters easily explained. It had been the greatest grief to the old man and a bitter grievance against destiny when, at the birth of his first child, he learned that he was the father of a girl. When the second and last child made its appearance and proved, like its sister, to be of the wrong sex, he was in despair. He had longed for a son to train in the use of arms which he should wield in his country's honour. "Bring them up as boys," some one suggested, "they are fine girls both of them, and would make splendid boys." From the moment that this idea took root in his mind, old Pierre found consolation. He adopted the suggestion _in toto_. The girls, while still young children, were dressed as boys, taught as boys, treated as boys, and perhaps almost, though not quite, loved as boys. From the earliest day upon which their little hands could hold and manipulate a rapier, he taught them to fence, and now--at the age of nineteen and twenty--the girls--Louise and Marie--could hold their own with almost any swordsman in Paris. Though no longer dressed in male attire, old Pierre's daughters still wore garments as nearly allied to the fashion of those worn by men as was consistent with propriety. The girls looked as like men as handsome girls could look; they associated entirely with men, talked and thought like men, were men to all practical purposes, excepting in one particular: their women's hearts remained to them. One, Marie, was engaged to marry young Karl Havet, to whom she was devotedly attached, much to the chagrin of her father, who regretted Marie's "weakness" as a sad falling away from the state of grace to which his daughter had attained. To have been brought up as a man and to have reached the point of perfection, or near it, in the most manly of all exercises, and then to exhibit the weakness of a silly woman by falling in love--"Bah!" said old Pierre, in speaking of it to his friends, "it is sad--it is cruel--it is incredible!" Nevertheless, the evil existed and must be recognised and put up with. The pair were engaged and within a month they would marry.