Barbiche suddenly buried his face in his hands, and exclaimed in a broken voice, "Oh, my mother!" When a Frenchman is in a very deep hole indeed, he always apostrophizes his mother; on ordinary occasions he thinks little enough about her. "Kerguel," he cried at length, looking up reproachfully at his friend, "you must have been mad. The sabre, as you know, is only used among cavalry officers; the pistol or the small-sword are the arms of gentlemen." "And also of journalists, my friend. Of that the _rusé_ old general, our man's friend, was unfortunately too well aware. You had tied me down too tightly, my Barbiche; my instructions were to obtain a meeting at any price. It was the choice of Hobson, that or none." Barbiche placed his hand to his swollen lip. "And you were right, my friend. Let us embrace." They did so with effusion. De Kerguel explained all the arrangements to his principal. Then they drove to the nearest cavalry barrack, where they had acquaintances; and that excellent fencer, Monsieur Barbiche, received an hour's lesson in the use of the sabre from the _maître d'armes_. But he found the weapon unwieldy, and he returned to his hotel a sadder man than he left it. Old General Pepper ate his lunch with considerable relish. He was sick and tired of Rome, its churches, its ruins, and its priests. He longed, with an ardent longing, for that paradise of retired military men, "the sweet shady side of Pall Mall;" he longed, too, for the whist tables at the Pandemonium, and his so-called friends at that establishment. He felt that if he only got safely across the frontier he would be one of the lions of the season; for he was certain that the business he was bent upon that afternoon would be no child's play. He himself was no particular friend of Haggard's; but he was proud of having done his best for his man. "After all," said he to himself, "it's six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. It's lucky for Haggard that Spunyarn sent for me, or that cursed Frenchman would have had his life to a certainty, for the friend meant fighting; I could see it in his eye." Such thoughts as these passed through the worthy officer's mind as he carefully packed his portmanteau. Then he paid his bill. "Now," he soliloquized, "this is what I call being sacrificed. Of one of these fellows I know absolutely nothing, and precious little of the other. But in the cause of honour I shall probably have to run half across Europe, and the worst of it is, at my own expense." Then the general started out to secure the longest and heaviest pair of cavalry sabres he could find in Rome. Haggard was equally active. He informed his wife and her cousin that they must leave Rome at once; the convenient excuse of an outbreak of cholera in the city was a sufficiently valid one for the ladies. By two o'clock Mrs. Haggard and Lucy, their maid Hephzibah, and Haggard's useful and polyglot valet, a Swiss, named Capt, were _en route_ for Geneva.