A shot was fired.  It was by Boleslas.  Dorsenne was unharmed.  Several steps had still to be taken in order to reach the limit.  He took them, and he paused to aim at his opponent with so evident an intention of killing him that they could distinctly hear Cibo cry: 

“Fire!  For God’s sake, fire!”

Julien pressed the trigger, as if in obedience to that order, incorrect, but too natural to be even noticed.  The weapon was discharged, and the three spectators at the window of the bedroom uttered three simultaneous exclamations on seeing Gorka’s arm fall and his hand drop the pistol.

“It is nothing,” cried the doctor, “but a broken arm.”

“The good Lord has been better to us than we deserve,” said the Marquis.

“Now, at least, the madman will be quieted....  Brave Dorsenne!” cried Florent, who thought of his brother-in-law and who added gayly, leaning on Montfanon and the doctor in order to reach the couch:  “Finish quickly, doctor, they will need you below immediately.”

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COSMOPOLIS

By Paul Bourget

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER IX

LUCID ALBA

The doctor had diagnosed the case correctly.  Dorsenne’s ball had struck Gorka below the wrist.  Two centimetres more to the right or to the left, and undoubtedly Boleslas would have been killed.  He escaped with a fracture of the forearm, which would confine him for a few days to his room, and which would force him to submit for several weeks to the annoyance of a sling.  When he was taken home and his personal physician, hastily summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for the first few days bed and rest, he experienced a new access of rage, which exceeded the paroxysms of the day before and of that morning.  All parts of his soul, the noblest as well as the meanest, bled at once and caused him to suffer with another agony than that occasioned by his wounded arm.  Was he satisfied in the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of those who knew him as an extraordinary personage?  He had hastened from Poland through Europe as an avenger of his betrayed love, and he had begun by missing his rival.  Instead of provoking him immediately in the salon of Villa Steno, he had waited, and another had had time to substitute himself for the one he had wished to chastise.  The other, whose death would at least have given a tragical issue to the adventure, Boleslas had scarcely touched.  He had hoped in striking Dorsenne to execute at least one traitor whom he considered as having trifled with the most sacred of confidences.  He had simply succeeded