For an instant my temper, provoked beyond endurance, was about to give way, when I perceived that a handkerchief was bound tightly around his leg above the knee, where a great stain of blood marked his trouser. The thought of his being wounded banished every particle of resentment, and laying my hand on his shoulder, I said,—
“De Beauvais, I know not one but yourself to whom I would three times say, forgive me. But we were friends once, when we were both happier. For the sake of him who is no more,—poor Charles de Meudon—”
“A traitor, sir,—a base traitor to the king of his fathers!”
“This I will not endure!” said I, passionately. “No one shall dare—”
“Dare!”
“Ay, dare, sir!—such was the word. To asperse the memory of one like him is to dare that which no man can, with truth and honor.”
“Come, sir, I'm ready,” said Be Beauvais, rising, and pointing to the door, “Sortons!”
No one who has not heard that one word pronounced by the lips of a Frenchman can conceive how much of savage enmity and deadly purpose it implies. It is the challenge which, if unaccepted, stamps cowardice forever on the man who declines it: from that hour all equality ceases between those whom a combat had placed on the same footing.
“Sortons!” The word rang in my ears, and tingled through my very heart, while a host of different impulses swayed me,—shame, sorrow, wounded pride, all struggling for the mastery: but above them all, a better and a higher spirit,—the firm resolve, come what would, to suffer no provocation De Beauvais could offer, to make me stand opposite to him as an enemy.
“What am I to think, sir?” said he, with a voice scarcely articulate from passion,—“what am I to think of your hesitation? or why do you stand inactive here? Is it that you are meditating what new insult can be added to those you have heaped on me?”