Monsieur Plays shifted from one leg to the other, and looked uneasily at the little man, faltering: "What! you--you want--to fight?" "Hush, and listen to me! I tell you again that I should deserve all her anger and yours, if I had acted as she thinks. But it is not so; and now she is only too thoroughly revenged on poor Albert! In our first affair, I thought I had killed him, but I was mistaken. Later, I had my revenge. When I learned of Albert's return to Paris, a month ago, I instantly sent him a challenge by a messenger, and he accepted it. Ah! he was a man of the nicest honor. We fought with pistols, near Pantin. I wounded Albert in the side, and he breathed his last the same day. Tell me, monsieur, if your good wife has any reason now to complain of me, when I have fought twice for her, when to avenge her I have killed one of my most intimate friends?" "You are a brave fellow!" said Monsieur Plays, shaking Tobie's hand; "I never doubted it. So poor Albert is really dead this time?" "Yes, unfortunately; for I will confess to you that it grieves me deeply." "I believe it, oh! I believe it. Adieu, Monsieur Pigeonnier! It is my turn now to apologize to you." "Your obedient servant, Monsieur Plays!" Tobie sauntered away, and Herminie's spouse returned to his better half and repeated all that the young man had just told him. Madame Plays listened impatiently, then exclaimed: "It isn't true. He has made a fool of you again. Albert isn't dead." "But, my dear love, he seemed to be deeply moved, and then he gave me all those details." "Lies! However, we will soon know the truth; and woe to you, monsieur, if you have allowed yourself to be hoodwinked! Come! Come!" "Where, madame?" "To Monsieur Vermoncey's house. Oh! I won't be deceived this time." Herminie seized her husband's arm, dragged him away from the Opéra, made him take a cab with her, and soon arrived at the house in which Albert formerly lived. There she questioned the concierge and learned that young Vermoncey had, in fact, been killed in a duel a month before; and all the details of the melancholy event that were given her agreed perfectly with what Tobie had said. Thereupon Madame Plays made a great outcry, sobbed, wept, tore her handkerchief, had an attack of hysteria, writhed on the floor of the concierge's lodge, and called Tobie a monster and an assassin. Monsieur Plays succeeded, not without difficulty, in taking his wife home, and all the way she kept asking him if he knew what she had done with the piece of a cigar that had belonged to Albert; she declared that she would give a thousand francs to anybody who would find it for her.