Signing it, I replied, "That should be big enough for the king to read without his spectacles!"

The clerk looked at me for a second. "Well it's hardly the start of a revolution, Mr. O'Hanlon."

"You started it," I returned, giving him a glaring eye.

"Oh, that's not a very mature response," he said, pulling a chessboard out of his drawer, a rather nice ivory and oak Staunton, setting up the pieces, giving me black, and adjusting the game to have started with a routine Sicilian and his 3rd move, e5, the Nimzovich variation.

I readjusted the board to reflect a more tame Ruy Lopez and my reply with Bird's defense, Nd4. "An ad hominem attack, this early in the argument? Hardly seems confidant."

He shook his head. "And what is metadiscourse? Ironic or hypocritical?" He adjusted the board again, switching us to a very staid Queen's Pawn game and the Colle system, offering Bd3, of course.

"I suppose you're expecting the usual c3, and you'll reply with c5?" I said. "Let's save ourselves the trouble, since you're no Colle and even if you were, I am no O'Hanlon!" I re-arranged the pieces once more, into the English opening, my move the king-side castle.

He stared at me with obvious contempt dripping from his gaze. "Are you trying to be funny? Why do you persist with these Revolutionary War metaphors?" He abandoned the game and pulled two fencing foils from behind his desk, thrusting one in my hand and moving me into seventh position, himself in eight, on the inside, as if having made a successful parry and taking the right-of-way. "Neither myself nor this bank are the English, and, let me add, you are, in fact, an O'Hanlon!"

I grabbed the tip of his foil, moved it to my six, his four, and slowly performed a circle, then a beat, and moved towards his six, my four. "Only contextually," I riposted. "If it where 1930, you where a Belgian, and we where in Nice, I assure you, I would be no O'Hanlon. And don't accuse me of demanding an Anglification of our situation. Your own choice of a sport steeped in French tradition has not gone un-noticed!"

He moved the tip if his own sword to his six, slid my own down to his seven, and then lay the tip of his foil on my right shoulder, as if to do a back-touch made so popular by those silly students who comprised the Stanford fencing team circa 1993. "I am afraid your imagination has gotten the better of you, O'Hanlon. You think this is a cosmopolitan argument, and choose to mask your own Anglophilia by introducing the irrelevant French!"

I turned to the side, brought the tip of his foil to the inside of my elbow, and looked to the judge, who flashed the white light and called his touch off-target. "Well on that point we agree then; the French are usually irrelevant."

He scowled, dropped his foil, swept the chess board off the desk, and pressed a series of buttons on his computer keyboard. The bank staff begin to run about, removing jackets and sweaters, donning mesh jerseys of red and gold, and arranging themselves behind the clerk and myself, until our positions matched the one exactly 26 minutes before the end of the 2003 Rugby world cup semi-final, England versus France, with myself as France, of course. "I'll do you for that, O' Hanlon. I am French!"

With a series of hand gestures I'd learned on a weekend course with the fantasy army reserves, I moved the bank personnel around until we stood as they did in the rumble scene of Francis Ford Coppola's magnificent The Outsiders. Although I felt mine was the heroic position, and certainly the bank could be equated with the wealthy Socs, nevertheless I conceded the role of Patrick Swayze and took up my own place as John C Meier. "So! I think I can see what you are trying to do! By claiming to be French, while at the same time giving me the French side in the Rugby world cup, you hope to show how I am not correct in using the world-political metaphors. But this is where you err, sir! It was you, not I, who made the original claim. Revolution indeed!"

And with that he whistled sharply, sending the staff scurrying, until we where at the Battle of Waterloo, and I as Napoleon. I could tell he was chomping at the bit to spray me with vindictives, but he waited until the staff had finished moving all the potted plants to the wall behind him, no doubt to symbolize the moment when the Prussian cavalry made their final push from the forest's edge. That done, he finally said, "And now I don't know if it's hypocrisy again or simply chutzpah, claiming I made the original claim, when you had to make a point about Nice, not to mention the very insulting comment about the French. Have at you!"

By this time I was growing weary. I pointed here and there, the bank workers moved around until we were at a point roughly 10 hours before our previous position. Of course I paid no attention to the scout, eschewed the hill at Mont-Saint-Jean where so many men died in the ravine cut for the sunken road connecting Ohain to Braine-l'Alleud, and concentrated instead on Papelotte. "Have at me? I am only here to finalize my bank loan!"

"You can't do that!" he shrieked, looking at the players in their new position. "This is no film based on a novel written in 1967! This is history!"

"Is it?" I cried. "I thought it was a bank. You want a battlefield?" I picked up a chair, my soldiers following suit, and we hurled them at the plate glass windows. Two-thirds of the host of heaven poured in, and me with my sword. I leaped onto the hoary clerk, my blade at his throat. "God made us immortal, Lucifer, which will be your curse if you do not relent. Jesus shall be the son of man!"

"No!" he screamed, and the remaining third of the bank fell through the floor, crashing into the vault's below, to spend all of eternity bereft of God's grace for the war they made in Heaven.

Standing over the crevice, I waited a minute or two to catch my breath. The bank staff began to put the office back together again-- the resident glazier prepared his tools and set to repairing the windows. Finally, I called down. "So is this the final document, then? My loan is approved?"

"Yes!" he shouted from below. "And don't forget your free gift, compliments of the bank." He tossed up a book, which landed at my feet. "Thank you for banking with First National!"

The book was Milton's Paradise Lost. Apparently, this was not over.