acefully in my ashes.
So may God bless you! The man who has Aronffy's word, as far as I know,
is a very gracious man, it will be easy for you to persuade him--his
name is Sarvoelgyi.'"

... At these words Topandy rose from his seat and went to the window,
opening both sides of it: so heavy was the air within the room. The cold
light of the moon shone on Lorand's brow.

Topandy, standing then at the window, continued the thrilling story he
had commenced. He could not sit still to relate it. Nor did he speak as
if his words were for Lorand alone, but as if he wished the dumb trees
to hear it too, and the wondering moon, and the shivering stars and the
shooting meteors that they might gainsay if possible the earthy worm who
was speaking.

"I at once hurried across to the fellow. I was now going with tender,
conciliatory countenance to a man whose threshold I had never crossed,
whom I had never greeted when we met. I first offered him my hand that
there might be peace between us. I began to appraise his graciousness,
his virtues. I begged him to pardon the annoyances I had previously
caused him; whatever atonement he might demand from me I would be glad
to fulfill.

"The fellow received me with gracious obeisance, and grasped my hand. He
said, upon his soul, he could not recall any annoyance he had ever
suffered from me. On the contrary he calculated how much good I had done
him in my life, beginning from his school-boy years:--I merely replied
that I certainly could not remember it.

"I hastened to come straight to the point. I told him that I had been
brought to his home by an affair the settlement of which I owed to a
good old friend, and asked him to read the letter that I had received
that day.

"Sarvoelgyi read the letter to the end. I watched his face all the time
he was reading it. He did not cease for a moment that stereotyped smile
of tenderness which gives me the shivers whenever I see it in my
recollections.

"When he was through with the letter, he quietly folded it and gave it
back.

"'Have you not discovered,' he said to me with pious face, 'that the man
who wrote that letter is--mad?'

"'Mad?' I asked, aghast.

"'Without doubt,' answered Sarvoelgyi; 'he himself writes that he has a
disease of the nerves, sees visions, and is afraid of his shadow. The
whole story is--a fable. I never had any conflict with our friend
Aronffy, which would have given occasion for an American or even a
Chinese duel