are to be my feelings?
Think you, that because I am an exile and an outcast,--forced
by misfortune to wear the livery of one who is not my rightful
sovereign,--that my sense of personal honor is the less, and that the
mark of an insult is not as blood-stained on my conscience as ever it
was?"

"Nothing but passion could blind you to the fact that there can be no
insult where no intention could exist."

"Spare me your casuistry, sir," replied he, with an insolent wave of his
hand, while he sank into a chair, and laid his head upon the table.

For an instant my temper, provoked beyond endurance, was about to give
way, when I perceived that a handkerchief was bound tightly around his
leg above the knee, where a great stain of blood marked his trouser. The
thought of his being wounded banished every particle of resentment, and
laying my hand on his shoulder, I said,--

"De Beauvais, I know not one but yourself to whom I would three times
say, forgive me. But we were friends once, when we were both happier.
For the sake of him who is no more,--poor Charles de Meudon--"

"A traitor, sir,--a base traitor to the king of his fathers!"

"This I will not endure!" said I, passionately. "No one shall dare--"

"Dare!"

"Ay, dare, sir!--such was the word. To asperse the memory of one like
him is to dare that which no man can, with truth and honor."

"Come, sir, I'm ready," said Be Beauvais, rising, and pointing to the
door, "Sortons!"

No one who has not heard that one word pronounced by the lips of a
Frenchman can conceive how much of savage enmity and deadly purpose
it implies. It is the challenge which, if unaccepted, stamps cowardice
forever on the man who declines it: from that hour all equality ceases
between those whom a combat had placed on the same footing.

"Sortons!" The word rang in my ears, and tingled through my very heart,
while a host of different impulses swayed me,--shame, sorrow, wounded
pride, all struggling for the mastery: but above them all, a better
and a higher spirit,--the firm resolve, come what would, to suffer no
provocation De Beauvais could offer, to make me stand opposite to him as
an enemy.

"What am I to think, sir?" said he, with a voice scarcely articulate
from passion,--"what am I to think of your hesitation? or why do you
stand inactive here? Is it that you are meditating what new insult can
be added to those you have heaped on me?"

"No, sir," I replied, firmly; "so far from thin