ympathetic friends.

"I've been thinking it over calmly," he said, gazing at them with
blood-shot, tired eyes. "I see that I must get rid of that intriguing
personage. Here he's managed to sneak on to the personal staff of the
marshal. It's a direct provocation to me. I can't tolerate a situation
in which I am exposed any day to receive an order through him. And God
knows what order, too! That sort of thing has happened once before--and
that's once too often. He understands this perfectly, never fear. I
can't tell you any more. Now you know what it is you have to do."

This encounter took place outside the town of Lubeck, on very open
ground, selected with special care in deference to the general sentiment
of the cavalry division belonging to the army corps, that this time
the two officers should meet on horseback. After all, this duel was a
cavalry affair, and to persist in fighting on foot would look like a
slight on one's own arm of the service. The seconds, startled by the
unusual nature of the suggestion, hastened to refer to their principals.
Captain Feraud jumped at it with alacrity. For some obscure reason,
depending, no doubt, on his psychology, he imagined himself invincible
on horseback. All alone within the four walls of his room he rubbed his
hands and muttered triumphantly, "Aha! my pretty staff officer, I've got
you now."

Captain D'Hubert on his side, after staring hard for a considerable
time at his friends, shrugged his shoulders slightly. This affair had
hopelessly and unreasonably complicated his existence for him. One
absurdity more or less in the development did not matter--all absurdity
was distasteful to him; but, urbane as ever, he produced a faintly
ironical smile, and said in his calm voice, "It certainly will do away
to some extent with the monotony of the thing."

When left alone, he sat down at a table and took his head into his
hands. He had not spared himself of late and the marshal had been
working all his aides-decamp particularly hard. The last three weeks of
campaigning in horrible weather had affected his health. When over-tired
he suffered from a stitch in his wounded side, and that uncomfortable
sensation always depressed him. "It's that brute's doing, too," he
thought bitterly.

The day before he had received a letter from home, announcing that his
only sister was going to be married. He reflected that from the time she
was nineteen and he twenty-six, when he went away to gar