“Ah! the lascar!” thought Max, “he’s an expert; I’m lost!”

He attempted a “moulinet,” and twirled his sabre with the dexterity of a single-stick.  He wanted to bewilder Philippe, and strike his weapon so as to disarm him; but at the first encounter he felt that the colonel’s wrist was iron, with the flexibility of a steel string.  Maxence was then forced, unfortunate fellow, to think of another move, while Philippe, whose eyes were darting gleams that were sharper than the flash of their blades, parried every attack with the coolness of a fencing-master wearing his plastron in an armory.

Between two men of the calibre of these combatants, there occurs a phenomenon very like that which takes place among the lower classes, during the terrible tussle called “the savante,” which is fought with the feet, as the name implies.  Victory depends on a false movement, on some error of the calculation, rapid as lightning, which must be made and followed almost instinctively.  During a period of time as short to the spectators as it seems long to the combatants, the contest lies in observation, so keen as to absorb the powers of mind and body, and yet concealed by preparatory feints whose slowness and apparent prudence seem to show that the antagonists are not intending to fight.  This moment, which is followed by a rapid and decisive struggle, is terrible to a connoisseur.  At a bad parry from Max the colonel sent the sabre spinning from his hand.

“Pick it up,” he said, pausing; “I am not the man to kill a disarmed enemy.”

There was something atrocious in the grandeur of these words; they seemed to show such consciousness of superiority that the onlookers took them for a shrewd calculation.  In fact, when Max replaced himself in position, he had lost his coolness, and was once more confronted with his adversary’s raised guard which defended the colonel’s whole person while it menaced his.  He resolved to redeem his shameful defeat by a bold stroke.  He no longer guarded himself, but took his sabre in both hands and rushed furiously on his antagonist, resolved to kill him, if he had to lose his own life.  Philippe received a sabre-cut which slashed open his forehead and a part of his face, but he cleft Max’s head obliquely by the terrible sweep of a “moulinet,” made to break the force of the annihilating stroke Max aimed at him.  These two savage blows ended the combat, at the ninth minute.  Fario came down to gloat over the sight of his enemy in the convulsions of death; for the muscles of a man of Maxence Gilet’s vigor quiver horribly.  Philippe was carried back to his uncle’s house.