“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.

“This is perfectly absurd,” he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment.  “We shall never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds.  It’s preposterous.”

“Seconds!  Damn the seconds!  We don’t want any seconds.  Don’t you worry about any seconds.  I shall send word to your friends to come and bury you when I am done.  And if you want any witnesses, I’ll send word to the old girl to put her head out of a window at the back.  Stay!  There’s the gardener.  He’ll do.  He’s as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his head.  Come along!  I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying about of a general’s orders is not always child’s play.”

While thus discoursing he had unbuckled his empty scabbard.  He sent it flying under the bed, and, lowering the point of the sword, brushed past the perplexed Lieut.  D’Hubert, exclaiming, “Follow me!” Directly he had flung open the door a faint shriek was heard and the pretty maid, who had been listening at the keyhole, staggered away, putting the backs of her hands over her eyes.  Feraud did not seem to see her, but she ran after him and seized his left arm.  He shook her off, and then she rushed towards Lieut.  D’Hubert and clawed at the sleeve of his uniform.