after the fracas at the "Soleil" our meeting would go unattended. When we
faced each other--Canaples and I--there were at least some twenty persons
present, who came, despite the rain, to watch what they thought was like to
prove a pretty fight. Men of position were they for the most part,
gentlemen of the Court with here and there a soldier, and from the manner
in which they eyed me methought they favoured me but little.

Our preparations were brief. The absence of seconds disposed of all
formalities, the rain made us impatient to be done, and in virtue of it
Canaples pompously announced that he would not risk a cold by stripping.
With interest did I grimly answer that he need fear no cold when I had done
with him. Then casting aside my cloak, I drew, and, professing myself also
disposed to retain my doublet, we forthwith engaged.

He was no mean swordsman, this Canaples. Indeed, his reputation was
already widespread, and in the first shock of our meeting blades I felt
that rumour had been just for once. But I was strangely dispossessed of
any doubts touching the outcome; this being due perchance to a vain
confidence in my own skill, perchance to the spirit of contemptuous
raillery wherewith I had from the outset treated the affair, and which had
so taken root in my heart that even when we engaged I still, almost
unwittingly, persisted in it.

In my face and attitude there was the reflection of this bantering,
flippant mood; it was to be read in the mocking disdain of my glance, in
the scornful curl of my lip, and even in the turn of my wrist as I put
aside my opponent's passes. All this, Canaples must have noted, and it was
not without effect upon his nerves. Moreover, there is in steel a subtle
magnetism which is the index of one's antagonist; and from the moment that
our blades slithered one against the other I make no doubt but that