"Not so. The class with which I am now engaged contains twenty skilled
artisans of about my own age."

"If they do not belong to the aristocracy, your instruction must be
surreptitious, because it is against the law."

"It is both surreptitious and against the law, but in spite of these
disadvantages, my twenty pupils are the best swordsmen in Frankfort, and
I would willingly pit them against any twenty nobles with whom I am
acquainted."

"So!" cried the merchant. "You are acquainted with twenty nobles, are
you?"

"Well, you see," explained the young man, flushing slightly, "these
metal-workers whom I drill, being out of employment, cannot afford to
pay for their lessons, and naturally, as you indicated, a fencing-master
must look to the nobles for his bread. I used the word acquaintance
hastily. I am acquainted with the nobles in the same way that a clerk in
the woolen trade might say he was acquainted with a score of merchants,
to none of whom he had ever spoken."

"I see. Am I to take it that your project for opening the Rhine depends
for its success on those twenty metal-workers, who quite lawlessly know
how to handle their swords?"

"Yes."

"Tell me what your plan is."