Finally, a week or so after that last bout of his with des Amis, the master called him once more to practice.
Hit again in the first bout, the master set himself to exert all his skill against his assistant. But to-day it availed him nothing before André-Louis' impetuous attacks.
After the third hit, M. des Amis stepped back and pulled off his mask.
"What's this?" he asked. He was pale, and his dark brows were contracted in a frown. Not in years had he been so wounded in his self-love. "Have you been taught a secret botte?"
He had always boasted that he knew too much about the sword to believe any nonsense about secret bottes; but this performance of André-Louis' had shaken his convictions on that score.
"No," said André-Louis. "I have been working hard; and it happens that I fence with my brains."
"So I perceive. Well, well, I think I have taught you enough, my friend. I have no intention of having an assistant who is superior to myself."
"Little danger of that," said André-Louis, smiling pleasantly. "You have been fencing hard all morning, and you are tired, whilst I, having done little, am entirely fresh. That is the only secret of my momentary success."
His tact and the fundamental good-nature of M. des Amis prevented the matter from going farther along the road it was almost threatening to take. And thereafter, when they fenced together, André-Louis, who continued daily to perfect his theory into an almost infallible system, saw to it that M. des Amis always scored against him at least two hits for every one of his own. So much he would grant to discretion, but no more. He desired that M. des Amis should be conscious of his strength, without, however, discovering so much of its real extent as would have excited in him an unnecessary degree of jealousy.
And so well did he contrive that whilst he became ever of greater assistance to the master—for his style and
