“Eh?  What matters the precise date of your insane conduct!” exclaimed the Chevalier testily.  “The principal thing is to arrange it...”

Noticing General D’Hubert getting restive and trying to place a word, the old emigre raised his arm and added with dignity: 

“I’ve been a soldier, too.  I would never dare to suggest a doubtful step to the man whose name my niece is to bear.  I tell you that entre gallants hommes an affair can be always arranged.”

“But, saperlotte, Monsieur le Chevalier, it’s fifteen or sixteen years ago.  I was a lieutenant of Hussars then.”

The old Chevalier seemed confounded by the vehemently despairing tone of this information.

“You were a lieutenant of Hussars sixteen years ago?” he mumbled in a dazed manner.

“Why, yes!  You did not suppose I was made a general in my cradle like a royal prince.”

In the deepening purple twilight of the fields, spread with vine leaves, backed by a low band of sombre crimson in the west, the voice of the old ex-officer in the army of the princes sounded collected, punctiliously civil.

“Do I dream?  Is this a pleasantry?  Or do you mean me to understand that you have been hatching an affair of honour for sixteen years?”

“It has clung to me for that length of time.  That is my precise meaning.  The quarrel itself is not to be explained easily.  We have been on the ground several times during that time of course.”

“What manners!  What horrible perversion of manliness!  Nothing can account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution which has tainted a whole generation,” mused the returned emigre in a low tone.  “Who is your adversary?” he asked a little louder.

“What?  My adversary!  His name is Feraud.”  Shadowy in his_ tricorne_ and old-fashioned clothes like a bowed thin ghost of the ancien regime the Chevalier voiced a ghostly memory.

“I can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval between Monsieur de Brissac, captain in the Bodyguards and d’Anjorrant.  Not the pockmarked one.  The other.  The Beau d’Anjorrant as they called him.  They met three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner.  It was the fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing...”

“This is nothing of the kind,” interrupted General D’Hubert.  He laughed a little sardonically.  “Not at all so simple,” he added.  “Nor yet half so reasonable,” he finished inaudibly between his teeth and ground them with rage.

After this sound nothing troubled the silence for a long time till the Chevalier asked without animation: 

“What is he—­this Feraud?”

“Lieutenant of Hussars, too—­I mean he’s a general.  A Gascon.  Son of a blacksmith, I believe.”

“There!  I thought so.  That Bonaparte had a special predilection for the canaille.  I don’t mean this for you, D’Hubert.  You are one of us, though you have served this usurper who...”