Their expectations were not disappointed. For the first minute or so the watching eyes around could hardly follow the swords, which flickered to and fro like flashes of lightning, feinting, warding, striking, parrying, till they seemed to be everywhere at once. De Malet at first pressed his man vigorously, but finding him more skillful than he had expected, he began to fight more cautiously, and to aim at tiring him out.
This artful plan seemed likely to succeed, for the Italian at length lowered his weapon for a moment, as if his hand was growing wearied. But as De Malet made a rapid stroke at him, the other suddenly _changed the sword from his right to his left hand_, and catching the Marquis's blade in reverse, sent it flying among the crowd below.
"Well done!" cried the young man, admiringly. "I thought I knew most tricks of fence, but I never saw one like that before."
"I could teach it to your lordship in a week," said the Italian. "For a man of your skill nothing is needed but practice."
"Say you so?" cried De Malet. "Then the sooner we begin, the better. Come home with me, and stay till you've taught me all you know. One doesn't meet a man like you every day."
And so for a month to come Antonio Spalatro was the guest of Henri de Malet; and the young Marquis learned to perform the feat which had excited his wonder quite as dexterously as the Italian himself.
White lay the snow upon the fields outside the blazing city of Moscow. The Russians had fired their own capital. The veteran bands of Napoleon were fleeing from fire to perish amid ice and snow.
A dozen arms were raised at once against the solitary man, who, with his back against a wall, and one foot on the body of his horse, sternly confronted them. Henri de Malet (now Colonel De Malet, of the French Cuirassiers) was still the same dashing fellow as ever, though twenty-three years had passed since he took his first lesson in fencing from Spalatro, the Italian, of whom he had never heard a word all this while. But if Spalatro was gone, his teaching was not, and De Malet's sword seemed to be everywhere at once, keeping the swarming Russians at bay, as it had done many a time already during the terrible retreat which was now approaching its end.