General D’Hubert moved on, passing from the glaring sunshine of the Provencal morning into the cool and aromatic shade of the pines.  The ground was clear between the reddish trunks, whose multitude, leaning at slightly different angles, confused his eye at first.  It was like going into battle.  The commanding quality of confidence in himself woke up in his breast.  He was all to his affair.  The problem was how to kill his adversary.  Nothing short of that would free him from this imbecile nightmare.  “It’s no use wounding that brute,” he thought.  He was known as a resourceful officer.  His comrades, years ago, used to call him “the strategist.”  And it was a fact that he could think in the presence of the enemy, whereas Feraud had been always a mere fighter.  But a dead shot, unluckily.

“I must draw his fire at the greatest possible range,” said General D’Hubert to himself.

At that moment he saw something white moving far off between the trees.  The shirt of his adversary.  He stepped out at once between the trunks exposing himself freely, then quick as lightning leaped back.  It had been a risky move, but it succeeded in its object.  Almost simultaneously with the pop of a shot a small piece of bark chipped off by the bullet stung his ear painfully.

And now General Feraud, with one shot expended, was getting cautious.  Peeping round his sheltering tree, General D’Hubert could not see him at all.  This ignorance of his adversary’s whereabouts carried with it a sense of insecurity.  General D’Hubert felt himself exposed on his flanks and rear.  Again something white fluttered in his sight.  Ha!  The enemy was still on his front then.  He had feared a turning movement.  But, apparently, General Feraud was not thinking of it.  General D’Hubert saw him pass without special haste from one tree to another in the straight line of approach.  With great firmness of mind General D’Hubert stayed his hand.  Too far yet.  He knew he was no marksman.  His must be a waiting game—­to kill.

He sank down to the ground wishing to take advantage of the greater thickness of the trunk.  Extended at full length, head on to his enemy, he kept his person completely protected.  Exposing himself would not do now because the other was too near by this time.  A conviction that Feraud would presently do something rash was like balm to General D’Hubert’s soul.  But to keep his chin raised off the ground was irksome, and not much use either.  He peeped round, exposing a fraction of his head, with dread but really with little risk.  His enemy, as a matter of fact, did not expect to see anything of him so low down as that.  General D’Hubert caught a fleeting view of General Feraud shifting trees again with deliberate caution.  “He despises my shooting,” he thought, with that insight into the mind of his antagonist which is of such great help in winning battles.  It confirmed him in his tactics of immobility.  “Ah! if I only could watch my rear as well as my front!” he thought, longing for the impossible.