“Take off your coat,” he said, “and let us see what you can do. Nature, at least, designed you for a swordsman. You are light, active and supple, with a good length of arm, and you seem intelligent. Take that mask and foil and come over here.”

He led him to the end of the room, where the bare floor was scored with lines of chalk to guide the beginner in the management of his feet. At the end of a ten minutes’ bout, M. des Amis offered him the situation, and explained it. In addition to imparting the rudiments of the art to beginners, he was to brush out the fencing-room every morning, keep the foils furbished, assist the gentlemen who came for lessons to dress and undress, and make himself generally useful. His wages for the present were to be forty livres a month, and he might sleep in an alcove behind the fencing-room if he had no other lodging.

The position, you see, had its humiliations. But, if André-Louis would hope to dine, he must begin by eating his pride as an hors d’oeuvre. “And so” he said, controlling a grimace, “the robe yields not only to the sword, but to the broom as well. Be it so. I stay.”