ging sanely in the
garden. He said, preserving his calm, "Why! If you take that tone,
of course I shall hold myself at your disposition whenever you are at
liberty to attend to this affair; but I don't think you will cut my ears
off."

"I am going to attend to it at once," declared Lieut. Feraud, with
extreme truculence. "If you are thinking of displaying your airs and
graces to-night in Madame de Lionne's salon you are very much mistaken."

"Really!" said Lieut. D'Hubert, who was beginning to feel irritated,
"you are an impracticable sort of fellow. The general's orders to
me were to put you under arrest, not to carve you into small pieces.
Good-morning!" And turning his back on the little Gascon, who, always
sober in his potations, was as though born intoxicated with the sunshine
of his vine-ripening country, the Northman, who could drink hard on
occasion, but was born sober under the watery skies of Picardy, made for
the door. Hearing, however, the unmistakable sound behind his back of a
sword drawn from the scabbard, he had no option but to stop.

"Devil take this mad Southerner!" he thought, spinning round and
surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieut. Feraud, with a
bare sword in his hand.

"At once!--at once!" stuttered Feraud, beside himself.

"You had my answer," said the other, keeping his temper very well.

At first he had been only vexed, and somewhat amused; but now his face
got clouded. He was asking himself seriously how he could manage to
get away. It was impossible to run from a man with a sword, and as
to fighting him, it seemed completely out of the question. He waited
awhile, then said exactly what was in his heart.

"Drop this! I won't fight with you. I won't be made ridiculous."

"Ah, you won't?" hissed the Gascon. "I suppose you prefer to be made
infamous. Do you hear what I say? . . . Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!"
he shrieked, rising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the
face.

Lieut. D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the
unsavoury word for a moment, then flushed pink to the roots of his
fair hair. "But you can't go out to fight; you are under arrest, you
lunatic!" he objected, with angry scorn.

"There's the garden: it's big enough to lay out your long carcass in,"
spluttered the other with such ardour that somehow the anger of the
cooler man subsided.

"This is perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a
way