. Hector Servadac was inflexible.

"No concession is possible," he replied, resolutely. "Rossini has been
deeply injured, and I cannot suffer the injury to be unavenged. Wagner
is a fool. I shall keep my word. I am quite firm."

"Be it so, then," replied one of the officers; "and after all, you know,
a sword-cut need not be a very serious affair."

"Certainly not," rejoined Servadac; "and especially in my case, when I
have not the slightest intention of being wounded at all."

Incredulous as they naturally were as to the assigned cause of the
quarrel, Servadac's friends had no alternative but to accept his
explanation, and without farther parley they started for the staff
office, where, at two o'clock precisely, they were to meet the seconds
of Count Timascheff. Two hours later they had returned. All the
preliminaries had been arranged; the count, who like many Russians
abroad was an aide-de-camp of the Czar, had of course proposed swords
as the most appropriate weapons, and the duel was to take place on the
following morning, the first of January, at nine o'clock, upon the cliff
at a spot about a mile and a half from the mouth of the Shelif. With
the assurance that they would not fail to keep their appointment with
military punctuality, the two officers cordially wrung their friend's
hand and retired to the Zulma Cafe for a game at piquet. Captain
Servadac at once retraced his steps and left the town.

For the last fortnight Servadac had not been occupying his proper
lodgings in the military quarters; having been appointed to make a local
levy, he had been living in a gourbi, or native hut, on the Mostaganem
coast, between four and five miles from the Shelif. His orderly was his
sole companion, and by any other man than the captain the enforced exile
would have been esteemed little short of a severe penance.

On his way to the gourbi, his mental occupation was a very laborious
effort to put together what he was pleased to call a rondo, upon a model
of versification all but obsolete. This rondo, it is unnecessary to
conceal, was to be an ode addressed to a young widow by whom he had been
captivated, and whom he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse
was intended to prove that when once a man has found an object in
all respects worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all
simplicity." Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very
material to the gallant captain, whose sole ambition at pres