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teachers whose age seemed a guarantee of knowledge, Jaime's own efforts and Monsieur de Montespan's cordial recommendations saw that Jaime soon acquired a good number of pupils of high social standing. In his salon he hung the ancient coat of arms of the Astarloa family: a silver anvil on a field vert, with the motto TO ME . He was Spanish, a gentleman, and had a sonorous name and a perfect right to display a coat of arms. Besides, he wielded the foil with diabolical skill. With all these things in his favor, the success of the new fencing master was pretty much assured in the Paris of the time. He earned good money and grew in experience. At that time too, he perfected—even then searching for the masterstroke—a thrust that he had invented and whose secret he guarded jealously, until the day when, at the insistence of friends and clients he was forced to include it in the repertoire of masterstrokes that he offered to his students. This was the famous two-hundred-escudo stroke, which enjoyed notorious success among the duelists in high society, who gladly paid that sum of money when they were in need of some decisive move with which to settle accounts with experienced opponents.

    While he remained in Paris, Jaime maintained a close friendship with his old teacher, whom he visited often. They still fenced together frequently, although the disease had now taken a firm hold on Montespan's body. Thus the day came when Lucien de Montespan was hit six times in a row, without his foil so much as brushing his pupil's chest once. The sixth time it happened, Jaime stopped and threw his foil to the floor, muttering an apology. His old teacher merely smiled sadly.
    "So," he said, "the student now outdoes his teacher. You have nothing more to learn from me. Congratulations."
    That was the last occasion on which they crossed steel. A few months later, when the young man visited him, Montespan received him by the fire, where he was sitting at a table with a heater placed underneath it. Three days earlier, he had closed his fencing academy, recommending all his clients to go to Jaime Astarloa. The laudanum he had been taking was no longer enough to relieve the pain, and he sensed his death approaching. He had just heard that his former pupil had a new challenge facing him, a duel with foils with an individual who worked as a fencing master without possessing a diploma from the Academy. His doing this incurred the wrath of the fencing masters who had the necessary qualifications to teach, and unpleasant disputes resulted. The Academy, which was very particular about this sort of thing, decided to put an end to the matter. Defending the corporate honor fell upon the youngest of its members, Jaime Astarloa.

    Teacher and former pupil talked long and hard about the subject. Montespan had obtained some valuable information about the man who was at the heart of the quarrel, one Jean de Rolandi, and brought the Academy's chosen defender up-to-date on his opponent's tricks. Rolandi was a good fencer, though nothing extraordinary; he had certain technical faults that could be used against him. He was left-handed, and although that presented a certain danger to an opponent who, like Jaime Astarloa, was used to men who fought with their right hand, Montespan was sure that the young man would emerge from the duel triumphant.
    "You must bear in mind, my boy, that a left-handed swordsman is sometimes less able to take 'time' correctly or perform a flanking move because of his difficulty in forming a straight opposition. With this Rolandi, your guard has to be in quarte outside. Do you agree?"
    "I do, maestro."
    "As regards thrusts, remember that, according to my information, when he moves his left hand, he does not keep his guard very well. Although, at first, he tends to have his wrist two or three inches higher than his opponent's, in the heat of the fight he often lowers his wrist. As soon as you see him do that, you must immediately deal him a