“Oh, by all that’s jolly! what a situation for the stage! A match, please. What next?”
“The baron spoke first. ‘I do not understand you, my dear count.’
“The count said: ‘Why not? It was very simple. I presume you to have said that you regretted the mistake, and then I suppose you apologized and came away to report to me. I am sorry to have sent you on a fruitless errand. Kindly tell us what passed.’
“The colonel sat up, and, as I thought, was a little embarrassed. He said: ‘With your permission, baron, I shall have the honor to relate our conversation. We put the matter, count, as you desired. You had been insulted. What explanation had M. Merton to offer? Then this amazing American said that it was not true that he had insulted you; that he had not given you his card; that he had never seen you; that it was a droll mistake—“that you were unfortunate in your friends.” I think I am correct, baron?’
“‘Yes. I so understood it.’
“‘Then you said, as I recall it, baron, that—that—there was only one word to apply to a man who could insult another and try to escape the consequences. Then he said—well, to cut it short, he would send his friends to us, and that, as he was the challenged party, it would save time if he now declared it must be rifles—or revolvers—or, yes, what he called bowie. What that is I know not.’”
“Lovely!” murmured Merton. “Go on.”
“I explained to the count’s friends that the bowie was a big knife with which our Western gentlemen chopped one another. The count sat still, with a look of repressed mirth, I choking with the fun of it, Aramis fidgeting, the baron swelling with rage. The count asked if that were all.
“Aramis went on: ‘When I assured M. Merton that the methods proposed were barbarous, he made himself unpleasant, and I was forced to say that his language was of such incorrectness—in fact, so monstrous that as a French soldier I held him personally responsible. The animal assured me that when he was through with you and the baron, he would attend to my own case. I grieve to admit, count, that our friend the baron, usually so amiable, had previously lost his temper. That was when our brigand proposed revolvers and the knife-bowie, and said we were difficult.’