Manchurian Books

"
"It is both surreptitious and against the law, but in spite of these
disadvantages, my twenty pupils are the best swordsmen in Frankfort, and
I would willingly pit them against any twenty nobles with whom I am
acquainted."
"So!" cried the merchant. "You are acquainted with twenty nobles, are
you?"
"Well, you see," explained the young man, flushing slightly, "these
metal-workers whom I drill, being out of employment, cannot afford to
pay for their lessons, and naturally, as you indicated, a fencing-master
must look to the nobles for his bread. I used the word acquaintance
hastily. I am acquainted with the nobles in the same way that a clerk in
the woolen trade might say he was acquainted with a score of merchants,
to none of whom he had ever spoken."
"I see. Am I to take it that your project for opening the Rhine depends
for its success on those twenty metal-workers, who quite lawlessly know
how to handle their swords?"
"Yes."
"Tell me what your plan is."
"I do not care to disclose my plan, even to you.


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