much even for his coolness. He jumped up thoughtlessly,
leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of an
average man (unless totally paralyzed by discomfiture) would have been
to stoop for his weapons, exposing himself to the risk of being shot
down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its
very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing whether
in reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not
affected by the customary mode of thought. In his young days, Armand
D'Hubert, the reflective, promising officer, had emitted the opinion
that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of a mistake."
This idea, defended and developed in many discussions, had settled into
one of the stock notions of his brain, had become a part of his mental
individuality. Whether it had gone so inconceivably deep as to affect
the dictates of his instinct, or simply because, as he himself declared
afterwards, he was "too scared to remember the confounded pistols," the
fact is that General D'Hubert never attempted to stoop for them. Instead
of going back on his mistake, he seized the rough trunk with both hands,
and swung himself behind it with such impetuosity that, going right
round in the very flash and report of the pistol-shot, he reappeared on
the other side of the tree face to face with General Feraud. This last,
completely unstrung by such a show of agility on the part of a dead man,
was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke hung before his face which
had an extraordinary aspect, as if the lower jaw had come unhinged.

"Not missed!" he croaked, hoarsely, from the depths of a dry throat.

This sinister sound loosened the spell that had fallen on General
D'Hubert's senses. "Yes, missed--a bout portant," he heard himself
saying, almost before he had recovered the full command of his
faculties. The revulsion of feeling was accompanied by a gust of
homicidal fury, resuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of
a lifetime. For years General D 'Hubert had been exasperated and
humiliated by an atrocious absurdity imposed upon him by this man's
savage caprice. Besides, General D'Hubert had been in this last instance
too unwilling to confront death for the reaction of his anguish not to
take the shape of a desire to kill. "And I have my two shots to fire
yet," he added, pitilessly.

General Feraud snapped-to his teeth, and his face assumed an irate,
undaunted