The place agreed upon for the duel was the Bois de Vincennes, and the time nine o'clock the following morning.
I called in the evening on Louis to ask him if he had any instructions for me; but his only reply was "Counsel comes with the night," so I waited on him next morning.
He was just finishing a letter when I entered, and he bade his servant Joseph leave us undisturbed for ten minutes.
"I am anxious," said Louis, "that my friend Giordano Martelli, who is a Corsican, should not know of this letter. But you must promise to carry out my wishes, and then my family may be saved a second misfortune. Now, please read the letter."
I read the letter Louis had written. It was to his mother, and it said that he was dying of brain fever. Her son, writing in a lucid interval, was beyond hope of recovery. It would be posted to her a quarter of an hour after his death. There was an affectionate postscript to Lucien.
"What does this mean? I don't understand it," I said.
"It means that at ten minutes past nine I shall be dead. I have been forewarned, that is all. My father appeared to me last night and announced my death."
He spoke so simply of this visit, that if it was an illusion it was as terribly convincing as the truth.
"There is one thing more," said Louis. "If my brother was to hear that I had been killed in a duel, he would at once leave Sullacro to come and fight the man who had killed me. And then if he were killed in his turn my mother would be thrice widowed. To prevent that I have written this letter. If it is believed that I have died of brain fever no one can be blamed." He paused. "Unless, unless--but no, that must not be."
I knew that my own strange fear was his.