is for you to fire, sir,” replied M. de Barjols.
“But,” continued Roland, as if he had not heard, “you will understand my impetuosity, and perhaps excuse it, when you hear that I am a soldier and General Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp.”
“Fire, sir,” replied the young nobleman.
“Say but one word of retraction, sir,” resumed the young officer. “Say that General Bonaparte’s reputation for honor and delicacy is such that a miserable Italian proverb, inspired by ill-natured losers, cannot reflect discredit on him. Say that, and I throw this weapon away to grasp your hand; for I recognize in you, sir, a brave man.”
“I cannot accord that homage to his honor and delicacy until your general has devoted the influence which his genius gives him over France as Monk did – that is to say, to reinstate his legitimate sovereign upon the throne.”
“Ah!” cried Roland, with a smile, “that is asking too much of a republican general.”
“Then I maintain what I said,” replied the young noble. “Fire! monsieur, fire!” Then as Roland made no haste to obey this injunction, he shouted, stamping his foot: “Heavens and earth! will you fire?”
At these words Roland made a movement as if he intended to fire in the air.
“Ah!” exclaimed M. de Barjols. Then with a rapidity of gesture and speech that prevented this, “Do not fire in the air, I beg, or I shall insist that we begin again and that you fire first.”
“On my honor!” cried Roland, turning as pale as if the blood had left his body, “this is the first time I have done so much for any man. Go to the devil! and if you don’t want to live, then die!”
At the same time he lowered his arm and fired, without troubling to take aim.
Alfred de Barjols put his hand to his breast, swayed back and forth, turned around and fell face down upon the ground. Roland’s bullet had gone through his heart.
Sir John, seeing M. de Barjols fall, went straight to Roland and drew him to the spot where he had thrown his hat and coat.
“That is the third,” murmured Roland with a sigh; “but you are my witness that this one would have it.”
Then giving his smoking pistol to Sir John, he resumed his hat and coat. During this time M. de Valensolle picked up the pistol which had escaped from his friend’s hand, and brought it, together with the box, to Sir John.
“Well?” asked the Englishman, motioning toward Alfred de Barjols with his eyes.
“He is dead,” replied the second.
“Have I acted as a man of honor, sir?” asked Roland, wiping away the sweat which suddenly inundated his brow at the announcement of his opponent’s death.
“Yes, monsieur,” replied M. de Valensolle; “only, permit me to say this: you possess the fatal hand.”
Then bowing to Roland and his second with exquisite politeness, he returned to his friend’s body.
“And you, my lord,” resumed Roland, “what do you say?”
“I say,” replied Sir John, with a sort of forced admiration, “you are one of those men who are made by the divine Shakespeare to say of themselves:
“‘Danger and I —
We were two lions littered in one day,
But I the elder.’”
CHAPTER V. ROLAND
The return was silent and mournful; it seemed that with the hopes of death Roland’s gayety had disappeared.
The catastrophe of which he had been the author played perhaps a part in his taciturnity. But let us hasten to say that in battle, and more especially during the last campaign against the Arabs, Roland had been too frequently obliged to jump his horse over the bodies of his victims to be so deeply impressed by the death of an unknown man.
His sadness was, due to some other cause; probably that which he confided to Sir John. Disappointment over his own lost chance of death, rather than that other’s decease, occasioned this regret.
On their return to the Hotel du Palais-Royal, Sir John mounted to his room with his pistols, the sight of which might have excited something like remorse in Roland’s breast. Then he rejoined the young officer and returned the three letters which had been intrusted to him.
He found Roland leaning pensively on a table. Without saying a word the Englishman laid the three letters before him. The young man cast his eyes over the addresses, took the one destined for his mother, unsealed it and read it over. As he read, great tears rolled down his cheeks. Sir John gazed wonderingly at this new phase of Roland’s character. He had thought everything possible to this many-sided nature except those tears which fell silently from his eyes.
Shaking his head and paying not the least attention to Sir John’s presence, Roland murmured:
“Poor mother! she would have wept. Perhaps it is better so. Mothers were not made to weep for their children!”
He tore up the letters he had written to his mother, his sister, and General Bonaparte, mechanically burning the fragments with the utmost care. Then ringing for the chambermaid, he asked:
“When must my letters be in the post?”
“Half-past six,” replied she. “You have only a few minutes more.”
“Just wait then.”
And taking a pen he wrote:
My DEAR GENERAL – It is as I told you; I am living and he is dead. You must admit that this seems like a wager. Devotion to death.
Your Paladin
ROLAND.
Then he sealed the letter, addressed it to General Bonaparte, Rue de la Victoire, Paris, and handed it to the chambermaid, bidding her lose no time in posting it. Then only did he seem to notice Sir John, and held out his hand to him.
“You have just rendered me a great service, my lord,” he said. “One of those services which bind men for all eternity. I am already your friend; will you do me the honor to become mine?”
Sir John pressed the hand that Roland offered him.
“Oh!” said he, “I thank you heartily. I should never have dared ask this honor; but you offer it and I accept.”
Even the impassible Englishman felt his heart soften as he brushed away the tear that trembled on his lashes. Then looking at Roland, he said: “It is unfortunate that you are so hurried; I should have been pleased and delighted to spend a day or two with you.”
“Where were you going, my lord, when I met you?”
“Oh, I? Nowhere. I am travelling to get over being bored. I am unfortunately often bored.”
“So that you were going nowhere?”
“I was going everywhere.”
“That is exactly the same thing,” said the young officer, smiling. “Well, will
