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Updated: May 11, 2025
Captain Plessy accordingly rose lightly from his seat. "Ah," said he, "my good friend the Lieutenant has after all left me my sword. The table too is already pushed sufficiently on one side. There is only one candle to be sure, but it will serve. You are not satisfied, gentlemen?
Captain Plessy had not been in the cellar at the time when the landlord had seemed to hear the chatter of a man's teeth. The dinner was not a pronounced success, in spite of Faversham's avoidance of any awkward topic. They sat at the long table in the big, desolate and shabby room, lighted only by a couple of tallow candles set up in their candlesticks upon the cloth.
As it is possible that my foreman may arrive too late to accomplish this mission, I should be much obliged if you would inquire at my house at Plessy, if he has yet come, and, in case of his still being absent, if you would take his place at the opening of the house in the Rue Saint-Francois.
The Frenchman got no reply whatever to his words but he seemed to hear some one sharply draw in a breath. He spoke again into the darkness; for it was now impossible for any one of the five men in the cellar to see a hand's breadth beyond his face. "I am the Captain Plessy of Mon Vandon's Division. I have the honour to address the Prussian officer."
He had broken through the lines about Metz and had ridden across France into Paris without a single companion. In the sorties from that beleaguered town he had successively distinguished himself by his fearless audacity. His name and reputation had travelled far as Lieutenant Faversham was that evening to learn. But Captain Plessy, for the moment, was all for making little of his renown.
A taste of war was in the air. Troops passed to review. Our post-carriage met the dashing coaches of gay young men I knew, who stared at me without recognition. Marquis du Plessy no longer made way for me and displayed me at his side. I drove to his hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain for my possessions.
"We can draw up an account of the quarrel, here now. Look here is paper and ink and as luck will have it a pen that will write. I will write an account with my own hand, and the four of us can sign it. Besides if you kill me, you can escape into Paris." "I will not fight you to-night," said Captain Plessy and he set down the candle upon the table.
One of the subalterns started up, the other merely turned his head towards Plessy, but both stared at their Captain with an unfeigned astonishment and an unfeigned disappointment. Faversham continued to plead. "But you must to-night, for to-morrow you cannot. To-night I am alone here, to-night I give orders, to-morrow I receive them. You have your sword at your side to-night.
Then " But both subalterns now hastened to assure Captain Plessy that they considered his conduct had been entirely justified. Lieutenant Fevrier of the 69th regiment, which belonged to the first brigade of the first division of the army of the Rhine, was summoned to the Belletonge farm just as it was getting dusk.
Of these signs, however, Plessy took no note. He had reached however inartistically the point at which he had been aiming. He was no longer to be baulked of reading his letter. He read it through to the end, and Faversham listened to the end. It told its own story. It was the letter of a girl who wrote in a frank impulse of admiration to a man whom she did not know.
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