General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder where the other
had dodged to, was come upon so suddenly that the first warning he had
of his danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of his
enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard a
footfall on the soft ground between the trees!
It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up instinctively,
leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of most
people (unless totally paralysed by discomfiture) would have been
to stoop--exposing themselves to the risk of being shot down in
that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very
definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing, whether in
reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not
affected by the customary mode of thought. Years ago, in his young
days, Armand D'Hubert, the reflective promising officer, had emitted the
opinion that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of
a mistake." This idea afterward restated, defended, developed in many
discussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain,
became a part of his mental individuality. And whether it had gone so
inconceivably deep as to affect the dictates of his instinct, or simply
because, as he himself declared, he was "too scared to remember the
confounded pistols," the fact is that General D'Hubert never attempted
to stoop for them. Instead of going back on his mistake, he seized
the rough trunk with both hands and swung himself behind it with such
impetuosity that going right round in the very flash and report of a
pistol shot, he reappeared on the other side of the tree face to face
with General Feraud, who, completely unstrung by such a show of agility
on the part of a dead man, was trembling yet.
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