ade me an offer of marriage."

"He made you an offer of marriage! When?"

"Last year, two months before your arrival."

"You did not accept?"

"Evidently not, as you see. Alexis is a most intelligent man, of an
excellent family and not without fortune, but the mere idea that beneath
the crown, on my marriage day, I should be obliged to kiss him before
every one! No! no! not for any thing in the world."

Marie's words opened my eyes. I understood the persistence of Alexis
in aspersing her character. He had probably remarked our mutual
inclination, and was trying to turn us from each other. The words which
had provoked our quarrel seemed to me the more infamous, as instead of
being a vulgar joke, it was deliberate calumny. The desire to punish
this shameless liar became so strong that I waited impatiently the
favorable moment. I had not long to wait. The next day, occupied
composing an elegy, biting my pen in the expectation of a rhyme, Alexis
knocked at my window. I put down my pen, took my sword, and went out of
the house.

"Why defer?" said Alexis, "we are no longer watched, let us go down to
the river-side; there none will hinder us."

We set out in silence, and having descended a steep path, we stopped at
the water's edge and crossed swords. Alexis was more skillful than I in
the use of arms, but I was stronger and bolder. Mons. Beaupre, who had
been, amongst other things, a soldier, had taught me fencing. Alexis did
not expect to find in me an adversary of so dangerous a character.

For some minutes neither gained any advantage over the other, but
at last noticing that Alexis was growing weak, I attacked him
energetically, and almost drove him backward into the river, when
suddenly I heard my name pronounced in a high voice. Turning my head
rapidly, I saw Saveliitch running toward me down the path. As I turned
my head, I felt a sharp thrust in the breast under the right shoulder,
and I fell, unconscious.

V. LOVE.

When I came to myself, I neither knew what had happened nor where I was.
I felt very weak; the room was strange, there was Saveliitch standing
before me, a light in his hand, and some one arranging the bandages that
bound my chest and shoulder. Gradually I recalled my duel, and easily
divined that I had been wounded. The door at this instant moaned gently
on its hinges.

"Well, how is he?" whispered a voice that made me start.

"Still in the same state," sighed Saveliitch, "now unco