They both protested vigorously.
"I will fight on those and no other conditions. He has called me a coward, and heaped every foul insult on me he could think of. I believe he did it, relying upon his greater skill. If he is now afraid to face the chance of certain death, let him do it. I am not. I will fight on no other conditions. If he refuses, I will brand him as a coward publicly."
They were still endeavouring to dissuade me when Livenza's two seconds arrived, and I left all four together. For an hour they wrangled, and then the two went away to consult their principal, and another hour passed before they returned and announced that their principal had consented, but under the strongest protest.
Then came the question where the duel should be fought, and, when Mayhew asked me, I said at once that the fittest place would be Colonel Livenza's own house, 150, Calle de Villanueva; and in making this choice I had in my thoughts the incidents which had occurred there on the night of my arrival in Madrid. To this Captain Pescada objected on the ground that it was most irregular for a duel to take place at the house of one of the principals, and that it might be to my disadvantage. But this did not turn me a hair's breadth from my resolve.
"I am glad you put it on that ground, for then my opponent can raise no objection. If I am to fall, I care not a jot where it happens. If my opponent, he can ask no more than to die near his own bed," I answered, grimly. "We are wasting time; let us drive there at once;" and in a few minutes we were in the carriage.
On the way scarce a word was said by anyone. I sat wrapped in my thoughts, brooding over my purpose and nursing with jealous care the plans I had formed. I was semi-conscious of the strange sensation that I was acting in obedience to some subtle outside force which was impelling me to pursue my present line of conduct. I was saturated with the conviction that I should come unharmed through the fight; and that great consequences to me were to follow from that night's proceedings.
The result was an indescribable and indeed half-weird sense of comparative detachment from my surroundings. I was moving forward toward an end of tragic importance; and the scene at the Café de l'Europe, the insult, the blow, the strange preliminaries of the duel, the very fight itself, were but so many necessary steps in the due achievement of the far greater end. Once, something of this found expression. I was conscious that my good friend Mayhew was completely baffled by a mood totally unlike any he had ever seen me in before, and I remember thinking that when the strain was over I would reassure him. I caught him looking wonderingly at me, and at length he asked, solicitously and almost wistfully—
"Have you any private arrangements you wish me to make?"
"There will be none to make, Silas. There will be no need. Nothing will happen to me to make them necessary." He received the answer gravely, with a nod of the head and a whispered, "I thought I'd ask;" and looked at me strangely and compassionately, as a man might look at a friend suddenly bereft of his senses. The look made me conscious for a second that my words of conviction must have sounded oddly; but the next instant the feeling passed and I was again considering how to use the victory which I felt I was going to win.
In my manner I was perfectly cool and self-possessed, and when we reached the house I led the way up the staircase to the rooms I had been in before; and finding the first room I looked in empty, I said I would wait there while the preparations were completed.