d, "Feraud! I had forgotten his existence."

"He's existing at present, very uncomfortably, it is true, in the
infamous inn of that nest of savages up there," said the one-eyed
cuirassier, drily. "We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses.
He's awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know.
The General has broken the ministerial order to obtain from you the
satisfaction he's entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he's
anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets on his scent."

The other elucidated the idea a little further. "Get back on the
quiet--you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too.
Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at
the first chance. It's a risk. But honour before everything."

General D'Hubert had recovered his powers of speech. "So you come here
like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with
that--that . . ." A laughing sort of rage took possession of him. "Ha!
ha! ha! ha!"

His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood
before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a
snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago
the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts,
they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own
narrow shadows falling so black across the white road: the military
and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests. They had an
outlandish appearance of two imperturbable bonzes of the religion of
the sword. And General D'Hubert, also one of the ex-masters of Europe,
laughed at these serious phantoms standing in his way.

Said one, indicating the laughing General with a jerk of the head: "A
merry companion, that."

"There are some of us that haven't smiled from the day The Other went
away," remarked his comrade.

A violent impulse to set upon and beat those unsubstantial wraiths to
the ground frightened General D'Hubert. He ceased laughing suddenly.
His desire now was to get rid of them, to get them away from his sight
quickly before he lost control of himself. He wondered at the fury
he felt rising in his breast. But he had no time to look into that
peculiarity just then.

"I understand your wish to be done with me as quickly as possible. Don't
let us waste time in empty ceremonies. Do you see that wood there at the
foot of that slope? Yes, the wood of pine