the
encounter.

"Monsieur Courthon," said he--and he felt a flush of shame mounting
to his brow, and realized that it may need more courage to avoid an
encounter than to engage in one--"there is something that in the heat
of passion I forgot; something that renders it difficult for me to meet
your friend at present."

Courthon looked at him as he might look at an impertinent lackey.

"And what may that be?" he inquired, mightily contemptuous. There was
a snigger from some in the crowd that pressed about them, and even
Monsieur Gaubert looked askance.

"Surely, sir," he began, "if I did not know you for Monsieur de
Garnache--"

But Garnache did not let him finish.

"Give me air," he cried, and cuffed out to right and left of him at the
grinning spectators, who fell back and grinned less broadly. "My reason,
Monsieur de Courthon," said he, "is that I do not belong to my self at
present. I am in Grenoble on business of the State, as the emissary of
the Queen-Regent, and so it would hardly become me to engage in private
quarrels."

Courthon raised his brows.

"You should have thought of that before you rolled Monsieur Sanguinetti
in the mud," he answered coldly.

"I will tender him my apologies for that," Garnache promised, swallowing
hard, "and if he still insists upon a meeting he shall have it in, say,
a month's time."

"I cannot permit--" began Courthon, very fiercely.

"You will be so good as to inform your friend of what I have said,"
Garnache insisted, interrupting him.

Cowed, Courthon shrugged and went apart to confer with his friend.

"Ah!" came Sanguinetti's soft voice, yet loud enough to be heard by
all present. "He shall have a caning then for his impertinence." And
he called loudly to the post-boy for his whip. But at that insult
Garnache's brain seemed to take fire, and his cautious resolutions were
reduced to ashes by the conflagration. He stepped forward, and,
virulent of tone and terrific of mien, he announced that since Monsieur
Sanguinetti took that tone with him, he would cut his throat for him at
once and wherever they should please.

At last it was arranged that they should proceed there and then to the
Champs aux Capuchins, a half-mile away behind the Franciscan convent.

Accordingly they set out, Sanguinetti and Courthon going first, and
Garnache following with Gaubert; the rear being brought up by a regiment
of rabble, idlers and citizens, that must have represented a very
cons