Even the faint moonlight that had come through the window was
swiftly veiled by Huguette, who drew the crimson curtains close
together. The dim light from the fire only seemed to accentuate and
intensify the darkness through which the two lanterns burned, pale
planets of yellow fire, in the hands of Casin and Colin. Villon
snatched the one and Thibaut took the other. There was a moment of
intense silence; then the voice of Huguette cried out of the
blackness: "Are you ready?"
Both combatants cried, "Yes!" in the same breath, and in the next
the battle began.
No stranger fight had ever been fought within those walls before, or
even perhaps within the walls of Paris. In the dense obscurity the
two antagonists groped for each other, alternately guided and
baffled by the light of the lanterns, as their holder lifted his
light suddenly in the air or dexterously concealed it under the fold
of his mantle. Every now and then the swords would meet with a
clash, there would be a hurried exchange of thrust and blow, and
then the adversaries would drift back again to grope and gleam and
seek each other anew, their lanterns flashing and disappearing like
accentuated glow-worms, and their blades now shining in sudden
illumination like streaks of blue lightning across the blackness and
now invisible even to those who held them in their hands.
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