"I thank you, sir, for your courtesy, and perchance may have occasion to
do the like gentle service for you. Gilles de Puiseux was of my blood
and kin; he has none other to take up his feud for him in this place, and
now your quickness of comprehension will tell you that the business
wherewith I permit myself to break your leisure will brook no tarrying.
Let me say that I take it not upon me to defend the words of my cousin,
who insulted a woman, and, as I believe, a messenger from the blessed
Saints that love France."

I looked at him in some amazement. He was a young man of about my own
years, delicately and richly clad in furs, silks, and velvets, a great
gold chain hanging in loops about his neck, a gold brooch with an ancient
Roman medal in his cap. But the most notable thing in him was his thick
golden hair, whence La Hire had named him "Capdorat," because he was so
blond, and right keen in war, and hardy beyond others. And here he was
challenging me, who stood before him in a prentice's hodden grey!

"Sir," I said, "I could wish you a better quarrel, but not more courtesy.
Many a gentleman seeing me such as I am, would bid me send, ere he
crossed swords with me, to my own country for my bor-brief, {18} which I
came away in too great haste to carry with me. Nay, I was but now to set
forth and buy me a sword and other accoutrements; natheless, from the
armoury here they may equip me with sword and body armour."

"Of body-armour take no thought," he answered, "for this quarrel is of a
kind that must needs be voided in our smocks"; he meaning that it was "a
outrance," till one of us fell.

Verily, now I saw that this was not to be a matter of striking sparks