What happened the next moment nobody was able to exactly explain.
A report rang out, and half a minute afterwards another. The seconds hastened to the spot, and found Alexander standing erect in his place; but Abellino had turned right round, and his hand was over his left ear. The surgeons came running up with the others.
"Are you wounded?" they asked Abellino.
"No, no!" said he, keeping one hand continually over his ear. "Deuce take that bullet, it flew so damned close to my ear that it has almost made me deaf. I can't hear a word of what I am saying. Curse the bullet! I would much rather that it had gone through my ribs."
"I wish it had with all my soul!" roared Conrad, who now came rushing up. "You are a damned fool, for you shot me instead of your opponent! Look, gentlemen! You see that tree by which I was standing? Well, the bullet burrowed right into it. What! fire at your own seconds? Do you call that discretion? If that tree had not been there, I should have been as dead as a ducat—as dead as a ducat, I say!"
So this is what must have happened. At the very moment when Alexander's bullet whizzed past Kárpáthy's ear he must have been so startled by the shock as to have involuntarily wheeled round and clapped one hand to his ear, and the same instant the loaded pistol in his other hand must have gone off sideways. At any rate, Kárpáthy was found standing, after the shot was fired, with his back to his opponent.
He himself heard none of Conrad's reproaches,
and the blood slowly began to trickle in little drops from his ear. He did not show it otherwise, but from the paleness of his face it was plain that he was suffering torments. The doctors whispered, too, that the membrane of the ear was ruptured, and that all his life long he would be hard of hearing.
Kárpáthy had to be conducted to his carriage. But for his sufferings he would have sworn. He would much rather have had a bullet in his lungs.
Rudolf and Michael then approached the seconds of the opposite party, and asked whether they considered the satisfaction given sufficient.