He sprang forward, and sent in a thrust which might have found its way
to Dalbert's heart had the heavy sabre of a dragoon not descended from
the side and shorn his more delicate weapon short off close to the hilt.
With a shout of triumph, his enemy sprang furiously upon him with his
rapier shortened, but was met by a sharp blow from the cudgel of the
young stranger which sent his weapon tinkling on to the ground. A
trooper, however, on the stair had pulled out a pistol, and clapping it
within a foot of the guardsman's head, was about to settle the combat,
once and forever, when a little old gentleman, who had quietly ascended
from the street, and who had been looking on with an amused and
interested smile at this fiery sequence of events, took a sudden step
forward, and ordered all parties to drop their weapons with a voice so
decided, so stern, and so full of authority, that the sabre points all
clinked down together upon the parquet flooring as though it were a part
of their daily drill.

"Upon my word, gentlemen, upon my word!" said he, looking sternly from
one to the other. He was a very small, dapper man, as thin as a
herring, with projecting teeth and a huge drooping many-curled wig,
which cut off the line of his skinny neck and the slope of his narrow
shoulders. His dress was a long overcoat of mouse-coloured velvet
slashed with gold, beneath which were high leather boots, which, with
his little gold-laced, three-cornered hat, gave a military tinge to his
appearance. In his gait and bearing he had a dainty strut and backward
cock of the head, which, taken with his sharp black eyes, his high thin
features, and his assured manner, would impress a stranger with the
feeling that this was a man of power. And, indeed, in France or out of
it there were few to whom this man's name was not familiar, for in all
France the only figure which loomed up as large as that of the king was
this very little gentleman who stood now, with gold snuff-box in one