The day after my struggle I had the curiosity to visit the scene of battle. I had not been mistaken: the stone on which my enemy's head had crashed was stained with blood at its sharpest end, and the colour of a few hairs, stuck to the bloody stone, confirmed my suspicions--which now became a definite certainty when furnished with this last proof. That night I saw Adèle: she was still ignorant of what had happened to me. I told her everything; I told her whom I suspected: she refused to believe it. Just at that moment, a surgeon, named Raynal, went past; I had seen him that morning come from the direction which led to the house of my wounded enemy. I went up to him. "What is the matter?" I asked him. "Why have you been sent for this morning?" "What is the matter, boy?" he replied in his Provençal accent. "Yes." "Why, he cannot have seen plainly last night, and, hurrying home, he gave himself a knock in the chest against a carriage pole. It was such a violent blow that he fell on his back and split his head open in falling." "When shall you pay him a second visit?" "To-morrow, at the same time as to-day." "Very well, doctor; tell him from me that, last night, passing by the same place where he fell, after him, I found his knife, and I send it back to him. Tell him, doctor, that it is a good weapon, but that, nevertheless, a man who has no other arms but this with him is unwise to attack a man who possesses two such pistols as these...." I fancy the doctor understood. "Oh yes; very good," he said. "I'll tell him, never fear." I presume that the man who owned the knife also understood, for I never heard the matter spoken of again, although, fifteen days later, I danced _vis-à-vis_ with him at the park ball. CHAPTER IV De Leuven makes me his collaborator--The _Major de Strasbourg_--My first _couplet-Chauvin_--The _Dîner d'amis_--The _Abencérages_ I had naïvely told de Leuven of my failure to translate Bürger's beautiful ballad; but as he had made up his mind to make me a dramatic author, he consoled me by telling me it was his father's opinion that some German works were absolutely untranslatable, and that the ballad of _Lénore_ was first among these. Seeing that de Leuven did not lose hope, I gradually regained mine. I may even venture to say that, a few days after this, I achieved a success.