Askest thou of me a clue
To that lady I love best? 
Fairest blossom ever grew! 
This I say, her eyes are blue.

He doffed his hat, pushing back the hair from his brow, and waited, eager, hopeful.  There was a little stir in the room that one thought was not the wind.

I had come unconsciously half-way up the street to him in the ardour of my interest; but now I was startled back to my duty by the sound of men running round the corner behind me.  One glance was enough; two abreast, swords in hand, they were charging us.  I ran before them, drawing blade as I went and shouting to M. Etienne.  But even as I called an answering shout came from the alley; two men of the Spanish guards shot out of the darkness and at us.

M. Etienne, with his extraordinary quickness, had got the lute off his neck, and now, for want of a better use of it, flung it at the head of his nearest assailant, who received it full in the face, stopped, hesitated a moment, and ran back the way he had come.  But three foes remained, with the whole Hotel de Lorraine behind them.

We put our backs to the wall and set to.  The remaining Spaniard engaged me; M. Etienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure of a doorway, held at bay with his good left arm a pair of attackers.  These were in the dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as if their cheeks blushed (well they might) for the deeds of their hands.

A broad window in the Hotel de Lorraine was flung open; a man leaned far out with a torch.  The bright glare in our faces bewildered our gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was about, and rammed my point against my Spaniard’s hilt, snapping my blade.

The sudden impact sent him stumbling back a pace, and M. Etienne, who, with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw everything, cried to me, “Here!”

I darted back into the doorway beside him.  His two assailants finding that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather hampered each other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the cleverer swordsman.  This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was shorter in the arm than my master and had the disadvantage of standing on the ground, whereas M. Etienne was up one step.  He could not force home any of his shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Etienne out of his coign to where in the open the two could make short work of him.  The rapiers clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again; and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his knees, with M. Etienne’s sword in his breast.

M. Etienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank backward, his mask-string breaking.  He was the one whom I had thought him—­Francois de Brie.

M. Etienne was ready for the second gentleman, but neither he nor the soldier attacked.  The torch-bearer in the window, with a shout, waved his arm toward the square.  A mob of armed men hurled itself around the corner, a pikeman with lowered point in the van.