I want to say something."

"What is the matter?" asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. "Has there been
foul play?"

"There has been foul play somewhere," said Dr. Bull, who was a little
pale. "Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times at least, and he
is none the worse."

The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly patience.

"Please let me speak," he said. "It is rather important. Mr. Syme,"
he continued, turning to his opponent, "we are fighting today, if
I remember right, because you expressed a wish (which I thought
irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by pulling my nose now
as quickly as possible? I have to catch a train."

"I protest that this is most irregular," said Dr. Bull indignantly.

"It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent," said Colonel Ducroix,
looking wistfully at his principal. "There is, I think, one case on
record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in which the weapons
were changed in the middle of the encounter at the request of one of the
combatants. But one can hardly call one's nose a weapon."

"Will you or will you not pull my nose?" said the Marquis in
exasperation. "Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! You can
have no conception of how important it is to me. Don't be so selfish!
Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!" and he bent slightly forward with
a fascinating smile. The Paris train, panting and groaning, had grated
into a little station behind the neighbouring hill.

Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures--the
sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was just
toppling over. Walking in a world he half understood, he took two paces
forward and seized the Roman nose of this remarkable nobleman. He pulled
it hard, and it came off in his hand.

He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the pasteboard
proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, while the sun and
the clouds and the wooded hills looked down upon this imbecile scene.

The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice.

"If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow," he said, "he can have it.
Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It's the kind of thing
that might come in useful any day," and he gravely tore off one of his
swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown forehead with it,
and politely offered it to the Colonel, who stood crimson and speechless
with rage.

"If I had know