claimed at first the privilege of the offended part; but he yielded
almost at once, and accepted your conditions. His seconds are two
military men."

"Thank you," said the vicomte.

The marquis added:

"Please excuse us if we do not stay now, for we have a good deal to see
to yet. We shall want a reliable doctor, since the duel is not to end
until a serious wound has been inflicted; and you know that bullets are
not to be trifled with. We must select a spot near some house to which
the wounded party can be carried if necessary. In fact, the arrangements
will take us another two or three hours at least."

The vicomte articulated for the second time:

"Thank you."

"You're all right?" asked the colonel. "Quite calm?"

"Perfectly calm, thank you."

The two men withdrew.

When he was once more alone he felt as though he should go mad. His
servant having lighted the lamps, he sat down at his table to write some
letters. When he had traced at the top of a sheet of paper the words:
"This is my last will and testament," he started from his seat, feeling
himself incapable of connected thought, of decision in regard to
anything.

So he was going to fight! He could no longer avoid it. What, then,
possessed him? He wished to fight, he was fully determined to fight, and
yet, in spite of all his mental effort, in spite of the exertion of all
his will power, he felt that he could not even preserve the strength
necessary to carry him through the ordeal. He tried to conjure up a
picture of the duel, his own attitude, and that of his enemy.

Every now and then his teeth chattered audibly. He thought he would read,
and took down Chateauvillard's Rules of Dueling. Then he said:

"Is the other man practiced in the use of the pistol? Is he well known?
How can I find out?"

He remembered Baron de Vaux's book on marksmen, and searched it from end
to end. Georges Lamil was not mentioned. And yet, if he were not an
adept, would he have accepted without demur such a dangerous weapon and
such deadly conditions?

He opened a case of Gastinne Renettes which stood on a small table, and
took from it a pistol. Next he stood in the correct attitude for firing,
and raised his arm. But he was trembling from head to foot, and the
weapon shook in his grasp.

Then he said to himself:

"It is impossible. I cannot fight like this."

He looked at the little black, death-spitting hole at the end of the
pistol; he thought of dishonor, of t