He picked up the weapons mechanically, and instead of firing them into General Feraud's breast, gave expression to the thought uppermost in his mind. “You will fight no more duels now.” [Illustration: frontispiece166.jpg “You will fight no more duels now.”] His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for General Feraud's stoicism. “Don't dawdle then, damn you for a coldblooded staff-coxcomb!” he roared out suddenly out of an impassive face held erect on a rigid body. General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding was observed with a sort of gloomy astonishment by the other general. “You missed me twice,” he began coolly, shifting both pistols to one hand. “The last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combat your life belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now.” “I have no use for your forbearance,” muttered General Feraud savagely. “Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine,” said General D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of feeling. In anger, he could have killed that man, but in cold blood, he recoiled from humiliating this unreasonable being--a fellow soldier of the Grand Armée, his companion in the wonders and terrors of the military epic. “You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me what I am to do with what is my own.” General Feraud looked startled. And the other continued: “You've forced me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal, as it were, for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided to my advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the same principle. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neither more nor less. You are on your honour.” “I am! But _sacrebleu!_ This is an absurd position for a general of the empire to be placed in,” cried General Feraud, in the accents of profound and dismayed conviction. “It means for me to be sitting all the rest of my life with a loaded pistol in a drawer waiting for your word. It's... it's idiotic. I shall be an object of... of... derision.” “Absurd?... Idiotic? Do you think so?” queried argumentatively General D'Hubert with sly gravity. “Perhaps. But I don't see how that can be helped. However, I am not likely to talk at large of this adventure. Nobody need ever know anything about it. Just as no one to this day, I believe, knows the origin of our quarrel.... Not a word more,” he added hastily. “I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far as I am concerned, does not exist.” When the duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking a little behind and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the two seconds hurried towards them each from his station at the edge of the wood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly: