would have liked to tear out their eyes, his
as well as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel. A fresh flood of
hatred filled her heart. God! how she hated them, and with what a
powerless hatred! But her time would come; another need pressed
sorely--to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save her brother.
To whom should she turn, however? To Dorsenne? To Montfanon? To Baron
Hafner? To Peppino Ardea? She thought by turns of the four personages
whose almost simultaneous visits had caused her to believe that they were
the seconds of the two champions. She rejected them, one after the other,
comprehending that none of them possessed enough authority to arrange the
affair. Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent's adversary, to Boleslas
Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had always found so
courteous. What if she should ask him to spare her brother? It was not
Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a grudge. Would he not be
touched by her tears? Would he not tell her what had led to the quarrel
and what she should ask of her brother that the quarrel might be
conciliated? Could she not obtain from him the promise to discharge his
weapon in the air, if the duel was with pistols, or, if it was with
swords, simply to disarm his enemy?

Like nearly all persons unversed in the art, she believed in infallible
fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas
profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another
in the matter of an insult. But how can women admit that inflexible rigor
in certain cases, which forms the foundation of manly relations, when
they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither in their arguments with
men, nor in their discussions among themselves? Accustomed always to
appeal from convention to instinct and from reason to sentiment, they
are, in the face of certain laws, be they those of justice or of honor,
in a state of incomprehension worse than ignorance. A duel, for example,
appears to them like an arbitrary drama, which the wish of one of those
concerned can change at his fancy. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred
would think like Lydia Maitland of hastening to the adversary of the man
they love, to demand, to beg for his life. Let us add, however, that the
majority would not carry out that thought. They would confine themselves
to sewing in the vest of their beloved some blessed medal, in
recommending him to the Providence, which, f