"You will fight no more duels now."
[Illustration: frontispiece166.jpg "You will fight no more duels now."]
His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for General
Feraud's stoicism.
"Don't dawdle then, damn you for a coldblooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared
out suddenly out of an impassive face held erect on a rigid body.
General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding was
observed with a sort of gloomy astonishment by the other general.
"You missed me twice," he began coolly, shifting both pistols to one
hand. "The last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combat
your life belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now."
"I have no use for your forbearance," muttered General Feraud savagely.
"Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine," said General
D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of
feeling. In anger, he could have killed that man, but in cold blood, he
recoiled from humiliating this unreasonable being--a fellow soldier
of the Grand Armee, his companion in the wonders and terrors of the
military epic. "You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me what
I am to do with what is my own."
General Feraud looked startled. And the other continued:
"You've forced me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal,
as it were, for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided
to my advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the same
principle.
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