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"So there are people who can restrain you?" "Not many, but he can." "And now you regret it?" "Honestly, no! This brave stage-robber did the business with such swaggering bravado that I admired him. I love brave men instinctively. Had I not killed M. de Barjols I should have liked to be his friend. It is true I could not tell how brave he was until I had killed him.
M. de Barjols halted first, took aim, and fired when Roland was but ten paces from him. The ball clipped one of Roland's curls, but did not touch him. The young man turned toward his second: "Well," said he, "what did I tell you?" "Fire, monsieur, fire!" said the seconds. M. de Barjols stood silent and motionless on the spot where he had fired.
The least I can do is to yield you this one, if for that matter it is an advantage." M. de Barjols no longer insisted. He took one of the two pistols at random. Sir John offered the other to Roland, who took it, and, without even examining its mechanism, cocked the trigger, then let it fall at arm's-length at his side.
Probably not; the fact is, for an instant he seemed to have forgotten seconds, duel, adversary, lost as he was in contemplation of this magnificent spectacle. M. de Barjols' voice aroused him from this poetical stupor. "When you are ready, sir," said he, "I am." Roland started. "Pardon my keeping you waiting, sir," said he. "You should not have considered me, I am so absent-minded.
I am quite sure that citizen Barjols will not say the General Buonaparte, as he calls him, is a thief." "No, I will not say it; but there is an Italian proverb which says it for me." "What is the proverb?" demanded the general in his companion's stead, fixing his calm, limpid eye upon the young noble.
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.
"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.
The chambermaid took a key hanging from a large black wooden tablet on which were arranged the numbers in white in two rows, and signed to the young traveller to follow her. "Send up some paper, and a pen and ink," Roland said to the landlord, "and if M. de Barjols should ask where I am tell him the number of my room."
At half-past six precisely the waiter informed Roland that his friends were in the courtyard. Roland greeted them cordially and sprang into his saddle. The party followed the boulevards as far as the Place Louis XV. and then turned up the Champs Elysees. On the way the strange phenomenon that had so much astonished Sir John at the time of Roland's duel with M. de Barjols recurred.
Just then some one knocked at the door, and the voice of the innkeeper asked: "May I come in?" The young man replied affirmatively. The door opened and the landlord entered, holding a card in his hand which he handed his guest. The young man took the card and read: "Charles du Valensolle." "From M. Alfred de Barjols," said the host. "Very well!" exclaimed Roland.
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