“Choose!” he said curtly, “Or use your own if you have any,—­but mine are loaded,—­take care yours are!  Play no theatrical tricks on such a stage as this!  “And then he gave a comprehensive wave of his hand towards the desolate waste of the Campagna around them, and the faint blue misty lines of the Alban hills just rimmed with silver in the rays of the moon.

At the first sight of the pistols the driver of the fiacre, who had been more or less stupefied till now, by the suddenness of the adventure, gave a sort of whining cry, and climbing down from his box fell on his knees before Miraudin, and then ran a few paces and did the same thing in front of the Marquis, imploring both men not to fight,—­not to get killed, on account of the trouble it would cause to him, the coachman;—­and with a high falsetto shriek a lady flung herself out of the recesses of the closed vehicle, and clung to the actor’s arm.

“Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!  What is it you would do?” she cried, “Be killed out here on the Campagna? and not a soul in sight—­not a house—­not a shelter?  And what is to become of me!—­Me!—­Me!—­” and she tapped her heaving bosom in melodramatic style, “Have you thought of me?”

“You—­you!” laughed Miraudin, tearing off the lace veil which she wore wrapped loosely round her head and shoulders, “You, Jeanne Richaud!  What is to become of you?  The same fate will attend you that attends all such little moths of the footlights!  Perhaps a dozen more lovers after me—­then old age, and the care of a third-class lodging-house for broken-down actors!” Here he chose his weapon.  “At your service, Marquis!”

Jeanne Richaud, a soubrette, whose chief stock-in-trade had been her large dark eyes and shapely legs, uttered a desperate scream, and threw herself at the feet of the Marquis Fontenelle.

“Monsieur!  Monsieur!  Think for a moment!  This combat is unequal—­out of rule!  You are a gentleman,—­a man of honour!—­would you fight without seconds?  It is murder—­murder—!”

Here she broke off, terrified in spite of herself by the immovability of Fontenelle’s attitude, and the coldness of his eyes.

“I regret to pain you, Madame,” he said stiffly, “This combat was arranged according to rule between Monsieur Miraudin and myself some hours since—­and though it seems he did not intend to keep his engagement I intend to keep mine!  The principals in the fight are here,—­seconds are, as their name implies, a secondary matter.  We must do without them.”

“By no means!” exclaimed Miraudin, “We have them!  Here they are!  You, Jeanne, will you be my second—­how often you have seconded me in many a devil’s game—­and you—­cochon d’un cocher!—­you will for once in your life support the honour of a Marquis!”