There was dead silence.  Then suddenly a sharp, crisp sound.  The vicomte had slapped his adversary’s face.  Every one rose to interfere.  Cards were exchanged.

When the vicomte reached home he walked rapidly up and down his room for some minutes.  He was in a state of too great agitation to think connectedly.  One idea alone possessed him:  a duel.  But this idea aroused in him as yet no emotion of any kind.  He had done what he was bound to do; he had proved himself to be what he ought to be.  He would be talked about, approved, congratulated.  He repeated aloud, speaking as one does when under the stress of great mental disturbance: 

“What a brute of a man!” Then he sat down, and began to reflect.  He would have to find seconds as soon as morning came.  Whom should he choose?  He bethought himself of the most influential and best-known men of his acquaintance.  His choice fell at last on the Marquis de la Tour-Noire and Colonel Bourdin-a nobleman and a soldier.  That would be just the thing.  Their names would carry weight in the newspapers.  He was thirsty, and drank three glasses of water, one after another; then he walked up and down again.  If he showed himself brave, determined, prepared to face a duel in deadly earnest, his adversary would probably draw back and proffer excuses.  He picked up the card he had taken from his pocket and thrown on a table.  He read it again, as he had already read it, first at a glance in the restaurant, and afterward on the way home in the light of each gas lamp:  “Georges Lamil, 51 Rue Moncey.”  That was all.

He examined closely this collection of letters, which seemed to him mysterious, fraught with many meanings.  Georges Lamil!  Who was the man?  What was his profession?  Why had he stared so at the woman?  Was it not monstrous that a stranger, an unknown, should thus all at once upset one’s whole life, simply because it had pleased him to stare rudely at a woman?  And the vicomte once more repeated aloud: 

“What a brute!”

Then he stood motionless, thinking, his eyes still fixed on the card.  Anger rose in his heart against this scrap of paper—­a resentful anger, mingled with a strange sense of uneasiness.  It was a stupid business altogether!  He took up a penknife which lay open within reach, and deliberately stuck it into the middle of the printed name, as if he were stabbing some one.

So he would have to fight!  Should he choose swords or pistols?—­for he considered himself as the insulted party.  With the sword he would risk less, but with the pistol there was some chance of his adversary backing out.  A duel with swords is rarely fatal, since mutual prudence prevents the combatants from fighting close enough to each other for a point to enter very deep.  With pistols he would seriously risk his life; but, on the other hand, he might come out of the affair with flying colors, and without a duel, after all.

“I must be firm,” he said.  “The fellow will be afraid.”