r; they left their cards to watch a quarrel that rejoiced their
instincts. Raphael, alone among this hostile crowd, did his best to keep
cool, and not to put himself in any way in the wrong; but his adversary
having ventured a sarcasm containing an insult couched in unusually keen
language, he replied gravely:

"We cannot box men's ears, sir, in these days, but I am at a loss for
any word by which to stigmatize such cowardly behavior as yours."

"That's enough, that's enough. You can come to an explanation
to-morrow," several young men exclaimed, interposing between the two
champions.

Raphael left the room in the character of aggressor, after he had
accepted a proposal to meet near the Chateau de Bordeau, in a little
sloping meadow, not very far from the newly made road, by which the man
who came off victorious could reach Lyons. Raphael must now either take
to his bed or leave the baths. The visitors had gained their point. At
eight o'clock next morning his antagonist, followed by two seconds and a
surgeon, arrived first on the ground.

"We shall do very nicely here; glorious weather for a duel!" he cried
gaily, looking at the blue vault of sky above, at the waters of the
lake, and the rocks, without a single melancholy presentiment or doubt
of the issue. "If I wing him," he went on, "I shall send him to bed for
a month; eh, doctor?"

"At the very least," the surgeon replied; "but let that willow twig
alone, or you will weary your wrist, and then you will not fire
steadily. You might kill your man instead of wounding him."

The noise of a carriage was heard approaching.

"Here he is," said the seconds, who soon descried a caleche coming along
the road; it was drawn by four horses, and there were two postilions.

"What a queer proceeding!" said Valentin's antagonist; "here he comes
post-haste to be shot."

The slightest incident about a duel, as about a stake at cards, makes an
impression on the minds of those deeply concerned in the results of the
affair; so the young man awaited the arrival of the carriage with a
kind of uneasiness. It stopped in the road; old Jonathan laboriously
descended from it, in the first place, to assist Raphael to alight;
he supported him with his feeble arms, and showed him all the minute
attentions that a lover lavishes upon his mistress. Both became lost to
sight in the footpath that lay between the highroad and the field where
the duel was to take place; they were walking slowl