marvellous work and the special possession of his own generation.  He felt an irrational tenderness towards his old adversary and appreciated emotionally the murderous absurdity their encounter had introduced into his life.  It was like an additional pinch of spice in a hot dish.  He remembered the flavour with sudden melancholy.  He would never taste it again.  It was all over.  “I fancy it was being left lying in the garden that had exasperated him so against me from the first,” he thought, indulgently.

The two strangers at the next table had fallen silent after the third mention of General Feraud’s name.  Presently the elder of the two, speaking again in a bitter tone, affirmed that General Feraud’s account was settled.  And why?  Simply because he was not like some bigwigs who loved only themselves.  The Royalists knew they could never make anything of him.  He loved The Other too well.

The Other was the Man of St. Helena.  The two officers nodded and touched glasses before they drank to an impossible return.  Then the same who had spoken before, remarked with a sardonic laugh, “His adversary showed more cleverness.”

“What adversary?” asked the younger, as if puzzled.

“Don’t you know?  They were two hussars.  At each promotion they fought a duel.  Haven’t you heard of the duel going on ever since 1801?”

The other had heard of the duel, of course.  Now he understood the allusion.  General Baron D’Hubert would be able now to enjoy his fat king’s favour in peace.

“Much good may it do to him,” mumbled the elder.  “They were both brave men.  I never saw this D’Hubert—­a sort of intriguing dandy, I am told.  But I can well believe what I’ve heard Feraud say of him—­that he never loved the Emperor.”

They rose and went away.

General D’Hubert experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a quagmire.  A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his way overcame him.  Even the image of the charming girl was swept from his view in the flood of moral distress.  Everything he had ever been or hoped to be would taste of bitter ignominy unless he could manage to save General Feraud from the fate which threatened so many braves.  Under the impulse of this almost morbid need to attend to the safety of his adversary, General D’Hubert worked so well with hands and feet (as the French saying is), that in less than twenty-four hours he found means of obtaining an extraordinary private audience from the Minister of Police.