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 hand, and deep-laced handkerchief in the other, upon the landing of the Huguenot’s house.  For who was there who did not know the last of the great French nobles, the bravest of French captains, the beloved Conde, victor of Recroy and hero of the Fronde?  At the sight of his pinched, sallow face the dragoons and their leader had stood staring, while De Catinat raised the stump of his sword in a salute.

“Heh, heh!” cried the old soldier, peering at him.

“You were with me on the Rhine—­heh?  I know your face, captain.  But the household was with Turenne.”

“I was in the regiment of Picardy, your Highness.  De Catinat is my name.”

“Yes, yes.  But you, sir, who the devil are you?”

“Captain Dalbert, your Highness, of the Languedoc Blue Dragoons.”

“Heh!  I was passing in my carriage, and I saw you standing on your head in the air.  The young man let you up on conditions, as I understood.”

“He swore he would go from the house,” cried the young stranger.  “Yet when I had let him up, he set his men upon me, and we all came downstairs together.”