Meantime the two hussars walked side by side, Lieutenant Feraud trying to fathom the hidden reason of things which in this instance eluded the grasp of his intellect; Lieutenant D'Hubert feeling bored by the part he had to play; because the general's instructions were that he should see personally that Lieutenant Feraud carried out his orders to the letter and at once.
"The chief seems to know this animal," he thought, eyeing his companion, whose round face, the round eyes and even the twisted-up jet black little moustache seemed animated by his mental exasperation before the incomprehensible. And aloud he observed rather reproachfully, "The general is in a devilish fury with you."
Lieutenant Feraud stopped short on the edge of the pavement and cried in the accents of unmistakable sincerity: "What on earth for?" The innocence of the fiery Gascon soul was depicted in the manner in which he seized his head in both his hands as if to prevent it bursting with perplexity.
"For the duel," said Lieutenant D'Hubert curtly. He was annoyed greatly by this sort of perverse fooling.
"The duel! The..."
Lieutenant Feraud passed from one paroxysm of astonishment into another. He dropped his hands and walked on slowly trying to reconcile this information with the state of his own feelings. It was impossible. He burst out indignantly:
"Was I to let that sauerkraut-eating civilian wipe his boots on the uniform of the Seventh Hussars?"
Lieutenant D'Hubert could not be altogether unsympathetic toward that sentiment. This little fellow is a lunatic, he thought to himself, but there is something in what he says.
"Of course, I don't know how far you were justified," he said soothingly. "And the general himself may not be exactly informed. A lot of people have been deafening him with their lamentations."
"Ah, he is not exactly informed," mumbled Lieutenant Feraud, walking faster and faster as his choler at the injustice of his fate began to rise. "He is not exactly.... And he orders me under close arrest with God knows what afterward."
"Don't excite yourself like this," remonstrated the other. "That young man's people are very influential, you know, and it looks bad enough on the face of it. The general had to take notice of their complaint at once. I don't think he means to be over-severe with you. It is best for you to be kept out of sight for a while."
"I am very much obliged to the general," muttered Lieutenant Feraud through his teeth.
"And perhaps you would say I ought to be grateful to you too for the trouble you have taken to hunt me up in the drawing-room of a lady who..."
"Frankly," interrupted Lieutenant D'Hubert, with an innocent laugh, "I think you ought to be. I had no end of trouble to find out where you were. It wasn't exactly the place for you to disport yourself in under the circumstances. If the general had caught you there making eyes at the goddess of the temple.... Oh, my word!... He hates to be bothered with complaints against his officers, you know. And it looked uncommonly like sheer bravado."
The two officers had arrived now at the street door of Lieutenant Feraud's lodgings. The latter turned toward his companion. "Lieutenant D'Hubert," he said, "I have something to say to you which can't be said very well in the street. You can't refuse to come in."
The pretty maid had opened the door. Lieutenant Feraud brushed past her brusquely and she raised her scared, questioning eyes to Lieutenant D'Hubert, who could do nothing but shrug his shoulders slightly as he followed with marked reluctance.
In his room Lieutenant Feraud unhooked the clasp, flung his new dolman on the bed, and folding his arms across his chest, turned to the other hussar.
"Do you imagine I am a man to submit tamely to injustice?" he inquired in a boisterous voice.
"Oh, do be reasonable," remonstrated Lieutenant D'Hubert.
"I am reasonable. I am perfectly reasonable," retorted the other, ominously lowering his voice. "I can't call the general to account for his behaviour, but you are going to answer to me for yours."
"I can't listen to this nonsense," murmured Lieutenant D'Hubert, making a slightly contemptuous grimace.
"You call that nonsense. It seems to me perfectly clear. Unless you don't understand French."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"I mean," screamed suddenly Lieutenant Feraud, "to cut off your ears to teach you not to disturb me, orders or no orders, when I am talking to a lady."
A profound silence followed this mad declaration—and through the open window Lieutenant D'Hubert heard the little birds singing sanely in the garden. He said coldly:
"Why! If you take that tone, of course I will hold myself at your disposal whenever you are at liberty to attend to this affair. But I don't think you will cut off my ears."
"I am going to attend to it at once," declared Lieutenant Feraud, with extreme truculence. "If you are thinking of displaying your airs and graces to-night in Madame de Lionne's salon you are very much mistaken."
"Really," said Lieutenant D'Hubert, who was beginning to feel irritated, "you are an impracticable sort of fellow. The general's orders to me were to put you under arrest, not to carve you into small pieces. Good-morning." Turning his back on the little Gascon who, always sober in his potations, was as though born intoxicated, with the sunshine of his wine-ripening country, the northman, who could drink hard on occasion, but was born sober under the watery skies of Picardy, made calmly for the door. Hearing, however, the unmistakable sound, behind his back, of a sword drawn from the scabbard, he had no option but to stop.
"Devil take this mad Southerner," he thought, spinning round and surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieutenant Feraud with the unsheathed sword in his hand.
"At once. At once," stuttered Feraud, beside himself.
"You had my answer," said the other, keeping his temper very well.
At first he had been only vexed and somewhat amused. But now his face got clouded. He was asking himself seriously how he could manage to get away. Obviously it was impossible to run from a man with a sword, and as to fighting him, it seemed completely out of the question.
He waited awhile, then said exactly what was in his heart:
"Drop this; I won't fight you now. I won't be made ridiculous."
"Ah, you won't!" hissed the Gascon. "I suppose you prefer to be made infamous. Do you hear what I say?... Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!" he shrieked, raising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the face. Lieutenant D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the unsavoury word, then flushed pink to the roots of his fair hair.
"But you can't go out to fight; you are under arrest, you lunatic," he objected, with angry scorn.
"There's the garden. It's big enough to lay out your long carcass in," spluttered out Lieutenant Feraud with such ardour that somehow the anger of the cooler man subsided.
"This is perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. "We will never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds. It's preposterous."
"Seconds! Damn the seconds! We don't want any seconds. Don't you worry about any seconds. I will send word to your friends to come and bury you when I am done. This is no time for ceremonies. And if you want any witnesses, I'll send word to the old girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his head. Come along. I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying about of a general's orders is not always child's play."
While thus discoursing he had unbuckled his empty scabbard. He sent it flying under the bed, and, lowering the point of the sword, brushed past the perplexed Lieutenant D'Hubert, crying: "Follow me." Directly he had flung open the door a faint shriek was heard, and