“Half the victory gone already, Vicomte!” cried the Chevalier.  Madame had addressed him as “Monsieur le Comte.”

“Do not disfigure your beauty, Madame; I desire that,” was the vicomte’s mocking retort.  “Now, my friends, if you all would see la belle France again!  But mind; the man who strikes the Chevalier a fatal blow shall by my own hand peg out.”

In a twinkling of an eye the bright tongues of steel met, flashed, sparkled, ground upon each other, pressed and beat down.  As the full horror of the situation came to her, madame saw the figures reel, and there were strangling sensations in her throat and bubbling noises in her ears.  The knife slipped from her fingers.  She rocked on her knees, sobbing.  The power to pray had gone; she could only watch, watch, watch.  Ah God! if he should die before her eyes!  Her hands rose from her bosom and pressed against her cheeks.  Dimly she could hear the gonk-gonk of flying water-fowl:  that murder should be done in so fair a place!

The unequal duel went on.  Presently The Fox stepped back, his arm gashed.  He cursed and took up his sword with his left hand.  They tried to lure the Chevalier from his vantage point; but he took no step, forward or backward.  He was like a wall.  The old song of battle hummed in his ears.  Would that Victor were here.  It would be a good fight.

“These Perignys are living sword blades,” murmured the vicomte.  “Come, come; this must end.”

They were all hardy men, the blood was rich, the eye keen, the wrist sure; but they could not break down the Chevalier’s guard.  They knew that in time they must wear him out, but time was very precious to the vicomte.  The Chevalier’s point laid open the rascal’s cheek, it ripped open Fremin’s forehead, it slid along Pauquet’s hand.  A cold smile grew upon the Chevalier’s lips and remained there.  They could not reach him.  There was no room for four blades, and soon the vicomte realized this.

“Satan of hell, back, three of you!  We can gain nothing this way.  Let me have him alone for a while.”

The vicomte’s allies drew away, not unreluctantly; and the two engaged.  Back a little, then forward a little, lunging, parrying, always that strange, nerve-racking noise of grating steel.  It seemed to madame that she must eventually go mad.  The vicomte tried all the tricks at his command, but to no avail; he could make no impression on the man in the doorway.  Indeed, the vicomte narrowly escaped death three or four different times.  The corporal, alive to the shade of advantage which the Chevalier was gaining and to the disaster which would result from the vicomte’s defeat, crept slowly up from the side.  Madame saw him; but her cry of warning turned into a moan of horror.  It was all over.  The Chevalier lay motionless on the ground, the blood trickling from a ragged cut above the temple.  The corporal had used the hilt of his heavy sword, and no small power had forced the blow.