“The affair passed without a blow being struck. My position was far more difficult than his, for I had promised not to molest him, and I could not foresee that the brave Vergy was the man to take alarm at my every movement. But when I secured the door, intending to detain him until the ambassador’s servants for whom I had sent arrived, he at once began to rush round the room, crying, ‘Do not touch me, do not touch me!’ ‘What!’ I replied, smiling, ‘you come to me in fighting trim, and are afraid lest I should touch you!’ A few dragoon-like expletives interlarded in this speech led him to mistake the window for the door; and noticing his pallor and his action, I said: ‘If you jump, I will push you; but take care, for you will find a moat and pikes below.’ This remark sufficed to stop him. “Then, handing a paper to him, I said: ‘I require you to read this note and sign it in duplicate.’ He ran through it so hastily that on returning it to me he asked for a delay of three weeks in order that he might receive letters from Paris. ‘If your mind was not so confused,’ I replied, ‘you would see that I give you a month.’ And taking him by the arm, I led him to my bedroom, where my writing-table stands. Upon entering he cried out: ‘Do not kill me!’ I did not know what to make of this exclamation, when suddenly I saw de Vergy’s eyes fixed on my Turkish sabre and my cavalry pistols, which I had brought back from the war in Germany. I then understood the cause of his excessive alarm, and at once laid one of the pistols on the floor, putting my foot on it lest it should bite the so-called de Vergy. ‘You see I am not going to hurt you or even to come near you,’ I said. ‘Now, sign with a good grace.’ Thereupon he resigned himself gallantly to signing the note in duplicate, and—I think it necessary to add—he did so with his hat under his arm and one knee on the floor. He did not see fit to take a copy of the note, although I suggested that he should do so; he was in too great a hurry to reach the door.”