“I have not learned the art of the axe,” said he, turning about, listlessly.  “You expect too much, Sir Executioner!”

I wasted no more words upon him, for I had not sought him to barter insults, but to force him to meet me where I could have my anger out upon him, and avenge the tears in the eyes of my Little Playmate.

Von Reuss was drawing a glove of yellow dressed kid through his hand as he spoke.  This I plucked from his fingers ere he was aware, and struck him soundly on either cheek with it before flinging it crumpled up in his face.

“Now will you fight, or must I strike you with my open hand?”

Then I saw the look of his uncle stand hell-clear in his eyes.  But he was not frightened, this one, only darkly and unscrupulously vengeful.

“Foul toad’s spawn, now I will have your blood!” he cried, tugging at his sword.

“We cannot fight here,” said I, “within sight of the palace windows.  But to-night at sundown, or to-morrow at dawn, I am at your service.”

“Let it be to-night, on the common at the back of the Hirschgasse—­one second, and the fighting only between principals.”

Very readily I agreed to that, or anything, and then, with a wave of my hat, I went off, cudgelling my brain whom I should ask to be my second.  Jorian, who was now an officer, I should have liked better than any other.  But, being of the people myself, it was necessary that I should have some one of weight and standing to meet the nephew of the Duke of the Wolfmark and his friend.

Moodily pacing down the glade, which led from the second terrace and the pleasaunce, I almost overran the Prince himself.  He was seated under a tree, a parchment of troubadours’ songs lay by him, illuminated (to judge by the woeful pictures) by no decent monkish or clerkly hand.  He had a bottle of Rhenish at hand, and looked the same hearty, hard-headed, ironic soldier he ever was, and yet, what is more strange, every inch of him a Prince.

“Whither away, young Sir Amorous,” he cried, pretending great indignation at my absent-mindedness, “head among the clouds or intent as ever on the damosels?  Conning madrigals for lovers’ lutes, mayhap?  And all the while taking no more heed of God’s honest princes than if they existed only for trampling under your feet.”

I asked his pardon—­but indeed I had not come so nigh him as that.

“I am to fight in a private quarrel,” said I, “and, truth to tell, I sorely want a second, and was pondering whom to ask.”

The Prince sighed.

“Ah, lad,” he said, “once I had wished no better than to stand up at your side myself.  I was not a Prince then though; and again, these laws—­these too strict laws of mine!  But what is the matter of your duel, and with whom?”

“Well,” said I, “I have slapped Count von Reuss’s chafts with his own glove, in the midst of his friends, on the upper terrace.”