“Until now, your sagacity has not been at fault,” said one of the officers. “But how do you know that the wound was slight?” “Ah, my son, I am quite certain of what I tell you. If the wound had been dangerous, they would have given me much greater alms upon their return.” CHAPTER XXXVIII. Eusebe had forgotten this “adventure,” as the Commandant de Vic would have called it, when, one morning, Adéonne, pale and trembling, embraced him tenderly, and handed him a document bearing an official stamp. “You have fought, my dear Eusebe,” she cried, “you have fought, and you have not told me!” “It is true.” “Oh, it was wrong, very wrong, not to tell me!” “What is this paper?” “Read!” The document was a “summons,” in which the sieur Eusebe Martin, perpetrator of sundry strokes and wounds on the person of the sieur Ravaud, calling himself De la Soulaye, &c. &c. was summoned to appear on the following Wednesday before Monsieur De la Varade, _juge d’instruction_, at Versailles. It was also set forth that, in default of his appearance at the time specified, a warrant would be issued for his arrest. Eusebe took the official document to Clamens, for the purpose of asking an explanation. The dramatist reassured him, saying that he also had been summoned, but that the affair was of no importance. “We will be sentenced to pay a few hundred francs as a fine, and to spend a few months in prison: that’s all. Do not alarm yourself.” “So!” said Eusebe, “a fellow is pleased to slander a lady; I have risked my life against his, when I ought to have simply strangled him; and now it is necessary that I should pay a fine and be subjected, with you and Paul, to imprisonment!” “All very natural,” replied the poet. “But he will be condemned also, I hope?” said Eusebe, with some vehemence of tone. “Not at all. He will be acquitted,--first, because he was insulted, and second, because he has suffered at your hands.” “But if I had killed him?” “As the combat was honorably conducted, we should have been exonerated from all blame.” “Ah!” exclaimed Eusebe, “my father said wisely that we should never do things by halves.” CHAPTER XXXIX. On the appointed Wednesday, Eusebe, Daniel Clamens, and Paul Buck arrived at Versailles. As the hour fixed for the hearing had not yet come, the three friends took a stroll through the city before repairing to the court-room. “Is that what you call the _Palais de Justice_?” inquired Eusebe, pointing to a building of rather pitiful appearance. “Yes,” responded Clamens. “You said to me, on the way,” rejoined the lover of Adéonne, “that justice was the first of established powers. One could have very little reason to question that, if he compared the palace of justice with that of a king.” “We have in France,” said Paul, “but ten palaces for kings, while for justice there are more than five hundred, in which she condemns more in a day than a monarch could pardon in a year.”