ok M. de Bargeton aside, saying, "Do you wish to speak to
Stanislas?"

"Yes," said the old gentleman, well pleased to find a go-between who
perhaps might say his say for him.

"Very well; go into Amelie's bedroom," said the controller of excise,
likewise well pleased at the prospect of a duel which possibly might
make Mme. de Bargeton a widow, while it put a bar between her and
Lucien, the cause of the quarrel. Then Chatelet went to M. de Chandour.

"Stanislas," he said, "here comes Bargeton to call you to account, no
doubt, for the things you have been saying about Nais. Go into your
wife's room, and behave, both of you, like gentlemen. Keep the thing
quiet, and make a great show of politeness, behave with phlegmatic
British dignity, in short."

In another minute Stanislas and Chatelet went to Bargeton.

"Sir," said the injured husband, "do you say that you discovered Mme. de
Bargeton and M. de Rubempre in an equivocal position?"

"M. Chardon," corrected Stanislas, with ironical stress; he did not take
Bargeton seriously.

"So be it," answered the other. "If you do not withdraw your assertions
at once before the company now in your house, I must ask you to look for
a second. My father-in-law, M. de Negrepelisse, will wait upon you at
four o'clock to-morrow morning. Both of us may as well make our final
arrangements, for the only way out of the affair is the one that I have
indicated. I choose pistols, as the insulted party."

This was the speech that M. de Bargeton had ruminated on the way; it
was the longest that he had ever made in life. He brought it out without
excitement or vehemence, in the simplest way in the world. Stanislas
turned pale. "After all, what did I see?" said he to himself.

Put between the shame of eating his words before the whole town, and
fear, that caught him by the throat with burning fingers; confronted by
this mute personage, who seemed in no humor to stand nonsense, Stanislas
chose the more remote peril.

"All right. To-morrow morning," he said, thinking that the matter might
be arranged somehow or other.

The three went back to the room. Everybody scanned their faces as they
came in; Chatelet was smiling, M. de Bargeton looked exactly as if he
were in his own house, but Stanislas looked ghastly pale. At the sight
of his face, some of the women here and there guessed the nature of the
conference, and the whisper, "They are going to fight!" circulated from
ear to ear. One-half o