took the brush and rubbed out what he considered was wrong.  Silvio took the chalk and corrected the score again.  The officer, heated with wine, play, and the laughter of his comrades, considered himself grossly insulted, and in his rage he seized a brass candlestick from the table, and hurled it at Silvio, who barely succeeded in avoiding the missile.  We were filled with consternation.  Silvio rose, white with rage, and with gleaming eyes, said: 

“My dear sir, have the goodness to withdraw, and thank God that this has happened in my house.”

None of us entertained the slightest doubt as to what the result would be, and we already looked upon our new comrade as a dead man.  The officer withdrew, saying that he was ready to answer for his offence in whatever way the banker liked.  The play went on for a few minutes longer, but feeling that our host was no longer interested in the game, we withdrew one after the other, and repaired to our respective quarters, after having exchanged a few words upon the probability of there soon being a vacancy in the regiment.

The next day, at the riding-school, we were already asking each other if the poor lieutenant was still alive, when he himself appeared among us.  We put the same question to him, and he replied that he had not yet heard from Silvio.  This astonished us.  We went to Silvio’s house and found him in the courtyard shooting bullet after bullet into an ace pasted upon the gate.  He received us as usual, but did not utter a word about the event of the previous evening.  Three days passed, and the lieutenant was still alive.  We asked each other in astonishment:  “Can it be possible that Silvio is not going to fight?”

Silvio did not fight.  He was satisfied with a very lame explanation, and became reconciled to his assailant.

This lowered him very much in the opinion of all our young fellows.  Want of courage is the last thing to be pardoned by young men, who usually look upon bravery as the chief of all human virtues, and the excuse for every possible fault.  But, by degrees, everything became forgotten, and Silvio regained his former influence.

I alone could not approach him on the old footing.  Being endowed by nature with a romantic imagination, I had become attached more than all the others to the man whose life was an enigma, and who seemed to me the hero of some mysterious drama.  He was fond of me; at least, with me alone did he drop his customary sarcastic tone, and converse on different subjects in a simple and unusually agreeable manner.  But after this unlucky evening, the thought that his honor had been tarnished, and that the stain had been allowed to remain upon it in accordance with his own wish, was ever present in my mind, and prevented me treating him as before.  I was ashamed to look at him.  Silvio was too intelligent and experienced not to observe this and guess the cause of it.  This seemed to vex him; at least I observed once or twice a desire on his part to enter into an explanation with me, but I avoided such opportunities, and Silvio gave up the attempt.  From that time forward I saw him only in the presence of my comrades, and our confidential conversations came to an end.