expression. "Go on!" he said, grimly.

These would have been his last words if General D'Hubert had been
holding the pistols in his hands. But the pistols were lying on the
ground at the foot of a pine. General D'Hubert had the second of leisure
necessary to remember that he had dreaded death not as a man, but as a
lover; not as a danger, but as a rival; not as a foe to life, but as an
obstacle to marriage. And behold! there was the rival defeated!--utterly
defeated, crushed, done for!

He picked up the weapons mechanically, and, instead of firing them into
General Feraud's breast, he gave expression to the thoughts uppermost in
his mind, "You will fight no more duels now."

His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for General
Feraud's stoicism. "Don't dawdle, then, damn you for a cold-blooded
staff-coxcomb!" he roared out, suddenly, out of an impassive face held
erect on a rigidly still body.

General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding was
observed with mixed feelings by the other general. "You missed me
twice," the victor said, coolly, shifting both pistols to one hand; "the
last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combat your life
belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now."

"I have no use for your forbearance," muttered General Feraud, gloomily.

"Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine," said General
D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of
feeling. In anger he could have killed that man, but in cold blood he
recoiled from humiliating by a show of generosity this unreasonable
being--a fellow-soldier of the Grande Armee, a companion in the wonders
and terrors of the great military epic. "You don't set up the pretension
of dictating to me what I am to do with what's my own."

General Feraud looked startled, and the other continued, "You've forced
me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal, as it were,
for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided to my
advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the same
principle. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neither
more nor less. You are on your honour till I say the word."

"I am! But, sacrebleu! This is an absurd position for a General of the
Empire to be placed in!" cried General Feraud, in accents of profound
and dismayed conviction. "It amounts to sitting all the rest of my
life with a lo