"Certainly; and why not?"
"You ask 'Why not?' Suppose you succeed? Of course you would have to fly, leave your mother alone; or, to be honest with you, if you were arrested, the death of this dog would be, as men would look at it, the murder of an official of the French legation. You know the intensity of party feeling here. You would be as sure to die by the gallows as any common criminal; and—there again is the mother to make a man hesitate."
"That is all true; but what can I do, sir? Must I sit down and wait?"
"For the present, yes. Opinion will change. Time is the magician of opportunities. The man will be here long. Wait. Go back to your work. Say nothing. There are, of course, the ordinary ways—a quarrel, a duel—"
"Yes, yes; anything—something—"
"Anything—something, yes; but what thing? You must not act rashly. Leave it to me to think over; and promise me to do nothing rash—to do nothing in fact just yet."
De Courval saw only too clearly that his friend was wiser than he. After a moment of silence he said: "I give you my word, sir. And how can I thank you?"
"By not thanking me, not a rare form of thanks. Now go to bed."
When alone, Schmidt said to himself: "Some day he will lose his head, and then the tiger will leap. It was clear from what I saw, and who could sit quiet and give it up? Not I. A duel? If this man I have learned to love had Du Vallon's wrist of steel or mine, it would be easy to know what to do. Ah, if one could know that rascal's fence—or if I—no; the boy would never forgive me; and to cheat a man out of a just vengeance were as bad as to cheat him of a woman's love." As for killing a man with whom he had no personal quarrel, the German, unreproached by conscience, considered the matter entirely in his relation to De Courval. And here, as he sat in thought, even a duel troubled him, and it was sure to come; for soon or late, in the limited society of the city, these two men would meet. He was deeply disturbed. An accident to De Courval was possible; well, perhaps his death. He foresaw even this as possible, since duels in that time were not the serio-comic encounters of the French duel of to-day.