ulting ME, and growing angry accordingly.

"This much right," he replied, "that I never allow myself to be
overlooked by any one, and that I always teach young fellows like
yourself their manners. What is your name, young sir, and where do you
live?"

At this I felt so hurt that my teeth chattered, and I felt as though I
were choking. Yet all the while I was conscious of being in the wrong,
and so, instead of offering any further rudeness to the offended one,
humbly told him my name and address.

"And MY name, young sir," he returned, "is Kolpikoff, and I will trouble
you to be more polite to me in future.--However, You will hear from me
again" ("vous aurez de mes nouvelles"--the conversation had been carried
on wholly in French), was his concluding remark.

To this I replied, "I shall be delighted," with an infusion of as much
hauteur as I could muster into my tone. Then, turning on my heel, I
returned with my cigarette--which had meanwhile gone out--to our own
room.

I said nothing, either to my brother or my friends, about what had
happened (and the more so because they were at that moment engaged in
a dispute of their own), but sat down in a corner to think over the
strange affair. The words, "You are a cad, young sir," vexed me more and
more the longer that they sounded in my ears. My tipsiness was gone now,
and, in considering my conduct during the dispute, the uncomfortable
thought came over me that I had behaved like a coward.

"Yet what right had he to attack me?" I reflected. "Why did he not
simply intimate to me that I was annoying him? After all, it may have
been he that was in the wrong. Why, too, when he called me a young cad,
did I not say to him, 'A cad, my good sir, is one who takes offence'? Or
why did I not simply tell him to hold his tongue? That would have been
the better course. Or why did I not challenge him to a duel? No, I did
none of those things, but swallowed his insults like a wretched coward."

Still the words, "You are a cad, young sir," kept sounding in my ears
with maddening iteration. "I cannot leave things as they are," I
at length decided as I rose to my feet with the fixed intention
of returning to the gentleman and saying something outrageous to
him--perhaps, also, of breaking the candelabrum over his head if
occasion offered. Yet, though I considered the advisability of this
last measure with some pleasure, it was not without a good deal of
trepidation that I re-entered the