The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its further passage.  Leclos, the sergeant-major, set us in our stations, engaged our wands, and left us.  To avoid blood-stained clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet.  The man was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong.  In the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a parade.  I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the same moment.  It was to play my life upon one card:  should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults, and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most readily expose.

‘Allez!’ said the sergeant-major.

Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted.  As it was, he did no more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.

When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads crowded around me.  I sat up.  ‘What is it?’ I exclaimed.

‘Hush!’ said the sergeant-major.  ‘Blessed be God, all is well.’  I felt him clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice. ’’Tis but a scratch, my child; here is papa, who is taking good care of you.  Your shoulder is bound up; we have dressed you in your clothes again, and it will all be well.’

At this I began to remember.  ‘And Goguelat?’ I gasped.

’He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; ’tis a bad business,’ said the sergeant-major.

The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a pair of scissors seemed to turn my stomach.  I am sure I might have killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse.  And to this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on the twine, appeared to contribute.  I ran to my fallen adversary, kneeled by him, and could only sob his name.

He bade me compose myself.  ’You have given me the key of the fields, comrade,’ said he.  ‘Sans rancune!’