Before the end of the truce Lieut.  D’Hubert got his troop.  The promotion was well earned, but somehow no one seemed to expect the event.  When Lieut.  Feraud heard of it at a gathering of officers, he muttered through his teeth, “Is that so?” At once he unhooked his sabre from a peg near the door, buckled it on carefully, and left the company without another word.  He walked home with measured steps, struck a light with his flint and steel, and lit his tallow candle.  Then snatching an unlucky glass tumbler off the mantelpiece he dashed it violently on the floor.

Now that D’Hubert was an officer of superior rank there could be no question of a duel.  Neither of them could send or receive a challenge without rendering himself amenable to a court-martial.  It was not to be thought of.  Lieut.  Feraud, who for many days now had experienced no real desire to meet Lieut.  D’Hubert arms in hand, chafed again at the systematic injustice of fate.  “Does he think he will escape me in that way?” he thought, indignantly.  He saw in this promotion an intrigue, a conspiracy, a cowardly manoeuvre.  That colonel knew what he was doing.  He had hastened to recommend his favourite for a step.  It was outrageous that a man should be able to avoid the consequences of his acts in such a dark and tortuous manner.

Of a happy-go-lucky disposition, of a temperament more pugnacious than military, Lieut.  Feraud had been content to give and receive blows for sheer love of armed strife, and without much thought of advancement; but now an urgent desire to get on sprang up in his breast.  This fighter by vocation resolved in his mind to seize showy occasions and to court the favourable opinion of his chiefs like a mere worldling.  He knew he was as brave as any one, and never doubted his personal charm.  Nevertheless, neither the bravery nor the charm seemed to work very swiftly.  Lieut.  Feraud’s engaging, careless truculence of a beau sabreur underwent a change.  He began to make bitter allusions to “clever fellows who stick at nothing to get on.”  The army was full of them, he would say; you had only to look round.  But all the time he had in view one person only, his adversary, D’Hubert.  Once he confided to an appreciative friend:  “You see, I don’t know how to fawn on the right sort of people.  It isn’t in my character.”

He did not get his step till a week after Austerlitz.  The Light Cavalry of the Grand Army had its hands very full of interesting work for a little while.  Directly the pressure of professional occupation had been eased Captain Feraud took measures to arrange a meeting without loss of time.  “I know my bird,” he observed, grimly.  “If I don’t look sharp he will take care to get himself promoted over the heads of a dozen better men than himself.  He’s got the knack for that sort of thing.”