With this positive assurance Bertrand had to be content. The pistols were again tried with caps. With grave misgivings, he and De Boigne placed their man. De Beauvallon also took up position. Dujarier took his pistol from his second so clumsily that he moved the trigger and nearly blew De Boigne's head off. The signal was given. Dujarier fired instantly. His ball flew wide of the mark. He let drop his pistol, and faced his adversary. De Beauvallon very deliberately raised his arms and covered his opponent. The spectators held their breath. "Fire, damn you! fire!" cried De Boigne, exasperated by his slowness. The Creole pulled the trigger. For an instant Dujarier stood erect. The next, he fell, huddled up on to the ground. The doctor rushed towards him. His practised eye told him that the wound was mortal. The bullet had entered near the bridge of the nose, and broken the occipital bone, so as to produce a concussion of the spine. De Guise assured Dujarier the wound was not serious and told him to spit. He tried in vain to do so. Bertrand summoned the carriage to approach. De Boigne leant over his friend, and asked him if he suffered much pain. Dujarier, already inarticulate, nodded; his eyelids dropped, and he fell back in the physician's arms. He was dead. D'Ecquevillez, seeing Dujarier fall, offered Bertrand his assistance. He was rebuffed, told to gather up his pistols, and to go. He hurried off with the other second and his principal, who murmured: "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" as he passed his late adversary. "How have I conducted myself?" he asked his second. "I hope I shall always act in similar circumstances as you did," was the reassuring reply. Meanwhile, Dumas had gone, full of anxiety, to the Rue Laffitte, to find that his friend had left the house, with what object he guessed. He noticed as a sinister omen that there was blood on the banister. He went away, sad at heart, to await the result of the combat. Lola, on the receipt of her lover's note, hurried at once to his house. She burst into his bedroom and saw two pistols--Alexandre's, no doubt--lying upon the quilt. Gabriel, Dujarier's servant, who had followed her, shook his head sadly, and said, "My master knows very well he will not return." In an instant Lola was again outside the house, driving to her good friend, Dumas's. The novelist told her that it was with De Beauvallon, not with De Beauvoir, that their friend had gone to exchange shots. "My God!" she cried, "then he is a dead man!" She rushed back to the Rue Laffitte. She spent half an hour in agony of mind, when the sound of a carriage stopping fell upon her ears. She flew into the street, and opened the carriage door. A heavy body lurched against her bosom. It was her dead lover. XV THE RECKONING