Von Sendlingen would almost have preferred the blow falling on his head.  An officer, whose reputation in fencing was no mean one, to be disarmed by a student who swung but his road-cane!  This was not all:  he had lost his sabre, and, noble though he was, he had to pass the vigorous inspection of his weapons like the humblest private soldier!  The absence of the regimental sword might cause degradation, ruin militarily and socially!  And all for a “music-hall squaller”—­and a Jewess at that!

He ground his teeth, and his eyes were filled with angry fire.  His face bore a greater resemblance to a tiger’s than a man’s, and had not the victor in this first bout possessed a stout heart, he might have regretted that he had commenced so well, so terrible would be the retaliation.

All the animal in the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him.  Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat, caught sight of the Jew’s walking-staff and sprang for it with an outcry of savage glee and hope.

On perceiving this move, in spite of the pain still crippling him, the old man started to retrace his steps to regain possession of his weapon, but he was soon distanced by the younger one.

Armed with this staff, the officer, remembering his student days, when he, too, was an expert swinger of the cane, a Bavarian mountaineer’s weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood before the student.

“Had you been a gentleman,” began the major, with a sullen courtesy, extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.

“A stick to a dog!” retorted the latter, falling into the position of guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.

This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by the contiguity of the fair Helen—­or, rather, Esther—­who had caused the fray.

The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers, there making them simple lookers-on.  The old Jew seemed eager to join in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at least, his knuckles severely rapped.  In the gloom, his hovering about the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and Valentine.