Lagardere laughed cheerfully. "Look if you like, but I am no such thing. I am cashiered, exiled from Paris." "Why?" asked Cocardasse, and Lagardere replied with a question: "Do you remember the Baron de Brissac?" Cocardasse nodded. "One of the best swords in Paris." Lagardere resumed: "Well, the late baron--" Passepoil interrupted: "The late baron?" Lagardere explained: "Brissac had a lewd tongue and smirched a woman. So I pulled his ears." Cocardasse grinned. "The devil you did!" "Yes," said Lagardere, "they were very long and tempting. We resumed the argument elsewhere. It was brief. Good-bye, Brissac! But as the good king, thanks to the good cardinal, now frowns upon duelling, I am exiled when I ought to be rewarded." Cocardasse sighed. "There is no encouragement for virtue nowadays." Lagardere's voice was as cheerful as if there were no such thing in the world as exile. "Well, there I was at my wit's end, and my nimble wits found work for me. 'If I must leave France,' I said, 'I will go to Spain, where the spirit of chivalry still reigns.' So I raised a regiment of adventurers like myself--broken gentlemen, ruined spendthrifts, poor devils out at elbow, gallant soldiers of fortune one and all. They wait for me a mile from here. We shall find work to do in Spain or elsewhere. The world is wide, and it has always work for good swords to do." Cocardasse looked at him admiringly. "Your sword will never rust for want of use," he said, with approval. Lagardere answered him, briskly: "Why should it? 'Tis the best friend in the world. What woman's eye ever shone as brightly as its blade, what woman's tongue ever discoursed such sweet music?" Cocardasse took off his hat and swung it. "Hurrah for the sword!" he shouted. Lagardere's glance applauded his enthusiasm. "Iron was God's best gift to man, and he God's good servant who hammered it into shape and gave it point and edge. I shall never be happy until I am master of it." Æsop joined the conversation mockingly. "I thought you were master of it," he said, with an obvious sneer. Cocardasse and Passepoil looked horrified at the hunchback's impertinence, but Lagardere did not seem to be vexed, and answered, quite amiably: "So did I till lately." Then he said, addressing himself generally to the company: "Have any of you ever heard of the thrust of Nevers?" A tremor of excitement ran through his audience. Cocardasse took up the talk: "We spoke of it but now." "Well," said Lagardere, "what do you think of it?" Æsop, the irrepressible, thrust in his opinion. "Never was secret thrust invented that cannot be parried." Lagardere looked at him somewhat contemptuously. "So I thought till I crossed swords with Nevers. Now I think differently." Cocardasse whistled. "The devil you do," he commented.