FullReads

The two officers had arrived now at the street door of Lieut. Feraud’s lodgings. The latter turned towards his companion. “Lieut. D’Hubert,” he said, “I have something to say to you, which can’t be said very well in the street. You can’t refuse to come up.”

The pretty maid had opened the door. Lieut. Feraud brushed past her brusquely, and she raised her scared and questioning eyes to Lieut. D’Hubert, who could do nothing but shrug his shoulders slightly as he followed with marked reluctance.

In his room Lieut. Feraud unhooked the clasp, flung his new dolman on the bed, and, folding his arms across his chest, turned to the other hussar.

“Do you imagine I am a man to submit tamely to injustice?” he inquired, in a boisterous voice.

“Oh, do be reasonable!” remonstrated Lieut. D’Hubert.

“I am reasonable! I am perfectly reasonable!” retorted the other with ominous restraint. “I can’t call the general to account for his behaviour, but you are going to answer me for yours.”

“I can’t listen to this nonsense,” murmured Lieut. D’Hubert, making a slightly contemptuous grimace.

“You call this nonsense? It seems to me a perfectly plain statement. Unless you don’t understand French.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean,” screamed suddenly Lieut. Feraud, “to cut off your ears to teach you to disturb me with the general’s orders when I am talking to a lady!”

A profound silence followed this mad declaration; and through the open window Lieut. D’Hubert heard the little birds singing 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.