Betz and Tallancourt at once sprang to my assistance, for they knew me too well not to be aware that I should not insult anyone in this fashion without good occasion. The chief thing we cared about was that it should not be noised abroad that we had taken part in a miserable café quarrel, so my adversary and I exchanged cards and arranged a meeting for the next day but one, at nine o'clock in the morning, by the café which adjoins the threshold of the big lonely house which stood for a long while in the middle of the place du Carrousel, called the _hôtel de Nantes._ Of course, Tallancourt and Betz were my seconds, although they were a little uneasy about their commission: first, because I was very young, and it was my first duel; then, because I had just come from the provinces and they did not know whether I knew how to handle the firearms I was about to use. They had arranged with the seconds of my adversary, M. Charles B---, our meeting for the following day at four o'clock in the afternoon, in the garden of the Palais-Royal, opposite the Rotonde, in order to give them more time to coach me. On leaving the café they asked me to tell them the cause of my quarrel, which I hastened to do; then, as they were commissioned to deal with the question of arms, they asked me which weapon I preferred. I replied that the question of weapons was a matter of indifference to me, and that as I had confided my interests into their hands, it was their affair and not mine. My assurance somewhat eased their minds; but Tallancourt nevertheless insisted I should have some practice, next morning at nine, in Gosset's shooting gallery. I had not put foot in a shooting gallery since I had come to Paris; but my familiarity with M. de Leuven's _Kukenreiter_ cannot have been forgotten, nor my broken slates, and the frogs I shot in two and the pieces of cardboard held in the hand as targets at Ponce's. Tallancourt asked for a dozen bullets. "Does the gentleman want to shoot _à la poupée_ or _à la mouche_?" the lad asked me. As I did not quite understand Parisian shooting habits and terms, I turned to Tallancourt, who asked for a _poupée._ The boy placed a metal doll on the spike--without doubt the biggest the establishment could produce; for the boy (whose name was Philippe--one recalls the minutest details connected with events of this sort) noticing my utter ignorance of shooting-gallery methods, took me for a schoolboy. Tallancourt, too, it was quite evident, shared the lad's opinion concerning me. I must confess this unanimity piqued me. "Tell me," I asked Tallancourt, "what that metal toy costs?" "Four sous," he said. "And how many bullets have you applied for?" "A dozen." "Well, then, as I am not rich enough to allow myself the luxury of smashing a dozen dolls, I will make this one a present of eleven of the bullets, and I will smash it with the twelfth." "What do you mean?" asked Tallancourt.