“I was presently coming to the phrase bluntly.  If I were not seventy; if I were young,” as if musing.

“Well,” truculently, “if you were young?”

The marquis’s bold and fearless eyes sparkled with fire.  “I am an old man; vain wishes are useless.  You are a coward, Monsieur; one of the coarser breed; and I say to you if my son had not challenged you or had accepted an apology, I would disown him indeed.  As you will not fight him, and as apologies are out of the question . . .  Here, Monsieur; there is equal light, and we are alone.”

“I do not kill old men.”

“Then listen:  I apply to you the term De Leviston applied to my son.”

“Monsieur, retract that!”

Their shoulders brushed and glowing eyes looked into glowing eyes.

“Bah!  In my fifties I killed more men of your kidney than I am proud of.  Retract?  I never retract;” and the marquis snapped his fingers under D’Herouville’s nose.

D’Herouville slapped the marquis in the face.  “Your age, Monsieur, will not save you.  No man shall address me in this fashion!”

“Not even my son, eh, Monsieur?  There is still blood in your muddy veins, then?  Come to my room, Monsieur; no one will see us there.  And you will not be subjected to the evils of the night air and the dew;” and the calm old man waved a hand toward the lights which shone from the windows of his room above.

“You have brought this upon yourself,” said D’Herouville, cold with fury, forgetting his newly healed wound.

“What worried me most was the fear that you might not understand me.  Permit me to show you the way, Monsieur.”

The marquis was the calmer of the two.  A strange and springing new life seemed to have entered his watery veins.  A flare of the old-time fire rose up within him:  he was again the prince of a hundred duels.  On reaching the room, he lit all the candles and arranged them so as to leave no shadows.  Next he poured out a glass of wine and drank it, drew his rapier, and bared his arm.

At the sight of that arm, thin and white, D’Herouville felt all his ire ooze from his pores.  He could not measure swords with this old man, who stood near enough to his grave without being sent into it offhand.

“Monsieur, forgive me for striking an old man, who is visibly my inferior in strength and youth.  My anger got the better of me.  Your courage compels my admiration.  I can not fight you.”

The marquis spat upon the floor.  “On guard, Monsieur!”

“If you insist;” and D’Herouville stepped forward carelessly.

The blades came together.  Then followed a sight for the paladins.  For it took D’Herouville but a moment to learn why the marquis had been called the prince of a hundred duels.  Only twice in his life had he met such a master.

“I am old, eh, Monsieur?” said the marquis, making an assault which D’Herouville, had his blade swerved the breadth of a hair, would never have neutralized.