The exclamation broke from Major Potel.
At the moment when the word “Go!” was spoken, Maxence caught sight of Fario’s ominous face; he was looking at them from the hole made by the Knights of the Order to put the pigeons through into his store. Those eyes, from which hatred and revenge shot like two showers of flame, dazzled Max.
The Colonel made straight for his antagonist, putting himself on guard in such a way as to secure the advantage. Experts in the art of killing know that the more skilful of two swordsmen can take the upper hand, to use an expression that suggests by a figure of speech the effect of the superior guard. This attitude, which allows a man in some degree to see what is coming, so effectually proclaims a duelist of the first class that a sense of his own inferiority sank deep into Max’s soul, producing that flutter of mind which is the ruin of a gambler when, face to face with a master-hand or a man in luck, he is disconcerted, and plays worse than usual.
“Ah, the wretch!” said Max to himself. “He is more than my match. I am done for!”
Max tried a circular flourish, wielding his sword with the skill of a player at single stick; he wanted to dazzle Philippe’s eye and strike his weapon, so as to disarm him; but at the first touch he felt that the Colonel had a wrist of iron, as flexible as a steel spring. Maxence had to find some other stroke; and he, wretched man, wanted to think, while Philippe, whose eyes sparkled more vividly than the flashing steel, parried every attack as coolly as a fencing master in pads in a school of arms.
Between two men, when both are so skilful as these combatants, the issue depends on a circumstance somewhat like that which decides the event of the horrible kicking matches among the common people, known as the Savate. The victory depends on a false move, on a mistake in the distance, as sudden as a lightning flash, which must be followed up instantly. For a certain time, as short to the spectators as it seems long to the adversaries, the fight consists in watchfulless, absorbing every power of mind and body, but hidden under feints apparently so slow and so cautious that it might be supposed that neither of the men meant business. This instant, followed by a swift and decisive struggle, is agonizing to the skilled beholder. Max presently parried badly, and the Colonel struck the sword out of his hand.
“Pick it up!” he said, pausing in the fight. “I am not the man to kill a disarmed foe.”
It was the sublime of ruthlessness. This generosity showed such certain superiority that it was regarded as the cleverest design by the lookers-on. In fact, when Max took up his guard again he had lost his presence of mind, and again, of course, found himself below the high guard which threatened him while covering his adversary. Then he hoped to retrieve his shameful defeat by a daring blow; he no longer tried to guard himself; he took his sword in both hands and rushed furiously on the Colonel, to wound him mortally, while allowing himself to be killed. Though Philippe received a sword-stroke which cut his forehead and part of his face, he split Max’s skull obliquely by a terrible swashing cut, intended to break the murderous blow Max meant to deal him. These two frantic cuts ended the fight in nine minutes. Fario came down to feast his eyes on the sight of his enemy’s death-struggle, for in a man so powerful as Max the muscles twitch frightfully. Philippe was carried to his uncle’s house.
Thus died one of those men destined to achieve great things if he had but remained in the position to which he was fitted; a man who was a spoilt child of nature, endowed with courage, cool blood, and the political astuteness of a Caesar Borgia. But education had not given him that loftiness of mind and conduct without which no achievement is possible in any walk of life. He was not regretted, for the insidious action of his adversary—a more worthless creature than himself—had succeeded in lowering him in public regard. His death put an end to the exploits of the Knights of Idlesse, to the great satisfaction of the town of Issoudun. Philippe got into no trouble in consequence of this duel, which indeed appeared to be the outcome of divine vengeance, and of which the details were discussed through all the neighborhood with unanimous praise of the two antagonists.
“They ought to have killed each other,” said Monsieur Mouilleron. “That would have been a good riddance for the Government.”
Flore Brazier’s position would have been a very embarrassing one but for the severe illness produced by Max’s death; she had an attack on the brain, complicated by dangerous inflammation, brought on by the fatigues and shocks of the last three days. If she had been in her usual health, she might perhaps have fled from the house where, just beneath her, in Max’s room and Max’s bed, lay Max’s murderer. For three months she hovered between life and death under the treatment of Monsieur Goddet, who also attended Philippe.
As soon as Philippe could hold a pen he wrote the following letters:—
To Monsieur Desroches, Attorney-at-Law.
I have already killed the more venomous of the two beasts, not without getting a hole in my head from a sword cut, but the rascal happily struck with a dead hand. There remains another viper with whom I must try to come to some understanding, for to my uncle she is as his very gizzard. I was much afraid lest this Rabouilleuse, who is devilish handsome, should take herself off, for my uncle would have gone after her; but the shock which came upon her at an evil moment has nailed her to her bed. If God were gracious to me,
