in giving that false friend occasion to humiliate him bitterly, leaving out of the question that he had rendered it impossible to fight again for many days.  None of the persons who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his coarse and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered.  They were all happy and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed of pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who came to see him about five o’clock.  They came from the races of Tor di Quinto, which had taken place that day.

“All is well,” began Cibo, “I will guarantee that no one has talked....  I have told you before, I am sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the witnesses and the coachman.”

“Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the races?” interrupted Boleslas.

“Yes,” replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of the question surprised too much for him to evade it with his habitual diplomacy.

“With whom?” asked the wounded man.

“Alone, that time,” replied Cibo, with an eagerness in which Boleslas distinguished an intention to deceive him.

“And Madame Maitland?”

“She was there, too, with her husband,” said Pietrapertosa, heedless of Cibo’s warning glances, “and all Rome besides,” adding:  “Do you know the engagement of Ardea and little Hafner is public?  They were all three there, the betrothed and the father, and so happy!  I vow, it was fine.  Cardinal Guerillot baptized pretty Fanny.”

“And Dorsenne?” again questioned the invalid.

“He was there,” said Cibo.  “You will be vexed when I tell you of the reply he dared to make us.  We asked him how he had managed—­nervous as he is—­to aim at you as he aimed, without trembling.  For he did not tremble.  And guess what he replied?  That he thought of a recipe of Stendhal’s—­to recite from memory four Latin verses, before firing.  ’And might one know what you chose?’ I asked of him.  Thereupon he repeated:  ’Tityre, tu patulae recubens!”

“It is a case which recalls the word of Casal,” interrupted Pietrapertosa, “when that snob of a Figon recommended to us at the club his varnish manufactured from a recipe of a valet of the Prince of Wales.  If the young man is not settled by us, I shall be sorry for him.”

Although the two ‘confreres’ had repeated that mediocre pleasantry a hundred times, they laughed at the top of their sonorous voices and succeeded in entirely unnerving the injured man.  He gave as a pretext his need of rest to dismiss the fine fellows, of whose sympathy he was assured, whom he had just found loyal and devoted, but who caused him pain in conjuring up, in answer to his question, the images of all his enemies.  When one is suffering from a certain sort of pain, remarks like those naively