Thinking that the object was, as usual, to decide who should pay for the dinner, or the _demi-tasse et chasse_, the players did not seem inclined to comply with this requisition; but when they learnt that a more momentous affair, a duel, was on foot, they hastened to lay down their cues. A duel! everything must yield to that! There were but few military men present, for that very day there was a _soirée_ at the general-commandant's of the garrison; and those few consisted of veterans, who preferred passing the evening at the _café_ to putting on silk-stockings and shoes, or of _chenapans_, who in the regiment went by the name of _crans_, or _bourreaux des cranes_. The old _grognards_, however, did not quit the room. The _chenapans_ interchanged glances with each other; and one or two of the sub-lieutenants, who had come to take their _demi-tasse_ before they went to the ball, also remained. They had all more or less formed a shrewd guess of what was to happen; and, for the honour of the service, waited for the quarrel to break out. In our schools and garrisons at Paris we are totally unacquainted with that _esprit de corps_ which engages a whole regiment, and an entire body of young men, in a duel, when two only are concerned; nor can we form a notion how slight a thing a duel is considered, when it is the custom to decide all questions sword in hand. Habit is all in all; and people soon learn to think no more of fighting than going to breakfast. It becomes a general endemic; and a person who, lost in the world of Paris, where he is unknown, might hesitate about demanding satisfaction for an insult however gross, would, in that atmosphere, be ready any day, or hour of the day, to call a man out for merely looking at him. The pool was begun. Never did a party, when a large sum of money depended on the issue of the game, play with more care and caution than those thirteen to decide which of them was to fight. By degrees the players lost their three lives, and the number was at last reduced to two; these two were the stranger guest and Alfonse. The lookers-on watched anxiously every stroke. Those balls, that as they rolled carried with them the fate of a man, were followed by earnest looks. The officers came nearer and nearer, and ranged themselves round the billiard. They were not a little interested to know whether they, or rather one of them,--which they knew not,--was to enter the lists with a freshman, no doubt unpractised in fencing, or with the most adroit and terrible duellist of the university. The chances were against them. The stranger lost.