pugnacious than
military, Lieutenant Feraud had been content to give and receive blows
for sheer love of armed strife and without much thought of advancement.
But after this disgusting experience an urgent desire of promotion
sprang up in his breast. This fighter by vocation resolved in his mind
to seize showy occasions and to court the favourable opinion of his
chiefs like a mere worldling. He knew he was as brave as any one
and never doubted his personal charm. It would be easy, he thought.
Nevertheless, neither the bravery nor the charm seemed to work very
swiftly. Lieutenant Feraud's engaging, careless truculence of a "_beau
sabreur_" underwent a change. He began to make bitter allusions to
"clever fellows who stick at nothing to get on." The army was full of
them, he would say, you had only to look round. And all the time he had
in view one person only, his adversary D'Hubert. Once he confided to an
appreciative friend: "You see I don't know how to fawn on the right sort
of people. It isn't in me."

He did not get his step till a week after Austerlitz. The light cavalry
of the _Grande Armee_ had its hands very full of interesting work for a
little while. But directly the pressure of professional occupation had
been eased by the armistice, Captain Feraud took measures to arrange a
meeting without loss of time. "I know his tricks," he observed grimly.
"If I don't look sharp he will take care to get himself promoted over
the heads of a dozen better men than himself. He's got the knack of that
sort of thing." This duel was fought in Silesia. If not fought out to
a finish, it was at any rate fought to a standstill. The weapon was
the cavalry sabre, and the skill, the science, the vigour, and the
determination displayed by the adversaries compelled the outspoken
admiration of the beholders. It became the subject of talk on both
shores of the Danube, and as far south as the garrisons of Gratz
and Laybach. They crossed blades seven times. Both had many slight
cuts--mere scratches which bled profusely. Both refused to have the
combat stopped, time after time, with what appeared the most deadly
animosity. This appearance was caused on the part of Captain D'Hubert by
a rational desire to be done once for all with this worry; on the part
of Feraud by a tremendous exaltation of his pugnacious instincts and
the rage of wounded vanity. At last, dishevelled, their shirts in rags,
covered with gore and hardly able to stand, they we