"I will tell you all about it," said Lagardere. "It happened three months ago. That secret thrust piqued me. Then people talked too much about Nevers; that irritated me. Wherever I went, from court to camp, from tavern to palace, the name of Nevers was dinned in my ears. The barber dressed your hair à la Nevers. The tailor cut your coat à la Nevers. Fops carried canes à la Nevers; ladies scented themselves à la Nevers. One day at the inn they served me cutlets à la Nevers. I flung the damned dish out of the window. On the doorstep I met my boot-maker, who offered to sell me a pair of boots à la Nevers. I cuffed the rascal and flung him ten louis as a salve. But the knave only said to me: 'Monsieur de Nevers beat me once, but he gave me a hundred pistoles.'" Passepoil sighed for the sorrows of his young pupil: "Poor little Parisian!" Lagardere went on with his tale: "Now I am vainglorious enough to hold that cutlets would taste good if they were cooked à la Lagardere; that coats à la Lagardere would make good wearing, and boots à la Lagardere good walking. I came to the conclusion that Paris was not big enough for the pair of us, and that Nevers was the man to quit the field. Like Æsop yonder, I laughed at the secret thrust." He paused, and Cocardasse questioned: "But you don't laugh now?" Lagardere answered him, gravely: "Not a laugh. I waited for Nevers one evening outside the Louvre and saluted him. 'Sir,' I said, in my grandest manner, 'I rely upon your courtesy to give me a moonlight lesson in your secret thrust.' Lord, how he started. 'Who the devil are you?' says he. I made him a magnificent bow. 'I am Henri de Lagardere, of the king's Light-Horse. I am always in trouble, always in debt, always in love. These are misfortunes a man can endure. But I am always hearing of your merits, which is fretting, and of your irresistible secret thrust, and that is unbearable.'" Lagardere paused to give dramatic effect to the point in his narrative. "What did he say to that?" asked Passepoil. Lagardere went on: "'Ah,' said the duke, 'you are the fellow they call handsome Lagardere'" (Lagardere interrupted the flow of his story with a pathetic parenthesis--"I can't help it, they do call me so"); "'people talk too much about you, and that wearies me'; which shows that he had a touch of my complaint. Well, he was civility itself. We went down by the church of St.-Germain, and had scarcely crossed swords when the point of his rapier pricked me here, just between the eyes. I was touched--I, Lagardere--and if I had not leaped backward I should have been a dead man. 'That is my secret thrust,' says the duke with a smile, and wished me good-evening." V THE PARRY TO THE THRUST OF NEVERS There was a heavy stillness in the room when Lagardere came to the end of his tale. "This sounds serious," Cocardasse said, gloomily, and those about him were gloomily silent.