us in an equivocal position. I was treating the boy as he deserved. If

the young scatterbrain knew of the scandal caused by his folly, he
would go, I am convinced, to insult Stanislas, and compel him to

fight. That would simply be a public proclamation of his love. I need
not tell you that your wife is pure; but if you think, you will see

that it is something dishonoring for both you and me if M. de Rubempre
defends her. Go at once to Stanislas and ask him to give you

satisfaction for his insulting language; and mind, you must not accept
any explanation short of a full and public retraction in the presence

of witnesses of credit. In this way you will win back the respect of
all right-minded people; you will behave like a man of spirit and a

gentleman, and you will have a right to my esteem. I shall send Gentil
on horseback to the Escarbas; my father must be your second; old as he

is, I know that he is the man to trample this puppet under foot that
has smirched the reputation of a Negrepelisse. You have the choice of

weapons, choose pistols; you are an admirable shot."
"I am going," said M. de Bargeton, and he took his hat and his walking

cane.
"Good, that is how I like a man to behave, dear; you are a gentleman,"

said his wife. She felt touched by his conduct, and made the old man
very happy and proud by putting up her forehead for a kiss. She felt

something like a maternalaffection for the great child; and when the
carriage gateway had shut with a clang behind him, the tears came into

her eyes in spite of herself.
"How he loves me!" she thought. "He clings to life, poor, dear man,

and yet he would give his life for me."
It did not trouble M. de Bargeton that he must stand up and face his

man on the morrow, and look coolly into the muzzle of a pistol pointed
straight at him; no, only one thing in the business made him feel

uncomfortable, and on the way to M. de Chandour's house he quaked
inwardly.

"What shall I say?" he thought within himself; "Nais really ought to
have told me what to say," and the good gentleman racked his brains to

compose a speech that should not be ridiculous.
But people of M. de Bargeton's stamp, who live perforce in silence

because their capacity is limited and their outlook circumscribed,
often behave at great crises with a ready-made solemnity" target="_blank" title="n.庄严；(隆重的)仪式">solemnity. If they say

little, it naturally follows that they say little that is foolish;
their extreme lack of confidence leads them to think a good deal over

the remarks that they are obliged to make; and, like Balaam's ass,
they speak marvelously to the point if a miracle loosens their

tongues. So M. de Bargeton bore himself like a man of uncommon sense
and spirit, and justified the opinion of those who held that he was a

philosopher of the school of Pythagoras.
He reached Stanislas' house at nine o'clock, bowed silently to Amelie

before a whole room full of people, and greeted others in turn with
that simple smile of his, which under the present circumstances seemed

profoundly ironical. There followed a great silence, like the pause
before a storm. Chatelet had made his way back again, and now looked

in a very significant fashion from M. de Bargeton to Stanislas, whom
the injured gentleman accosted politely.

Chatelet knew what a visit meant at this time of night, when old M. de
Bargeton was invariably in his bed. It was evidently Nais who had set

the feeble arm in motion. Chatelet was on such a footing in that house
that he had some right to interfere in family concerns. He rose to his

feet and took M. de Bargeton aside, saying, "Do you wish to speak to
Stanislas?"

"Yes," said the old gentleman, well pleased to find a go-between who
perhaps might say his say for him.

"Very well; go into Amelie's bedroom," said the controller of excise,
likewise well pleased at the prospect of a duel which possibly might

make Mme. de Bargeton a widow, while it put a bar between her and
Lucien, the cause of the quarrel. Then Chatelet went to M. de

Chandour.
"Stanislas," he said, "here comes Bargeton to call you to account, no

doubt, for the things you have been saying about Nais. Go into your
wife's room, and behave, both of you, like gentlemen. Keep the thing

quiet, and make a great show of politeness, behave with phlegmatic
British dignity, in short."

In another minute Stanislas and Chatelet went to Bargeton.
"Sir," said the injured husband, "do you say that you discovered Mme.

de Bargeton and M. de Rubempre in an equivocal position?"
"M. Chardon," corrected Stanislas, with ironical stress; he did not

take Bargeton seriously.
"So be it," answered the other. "If you do not withdraw your

assertions at once before the company now in your house, I must ask
you to look for a second. My father-in-law, M. de Negrepelisse, will

wait upon you at four o'clock to-morrow morning. Both of us may as
well make our final arrangements, for the only way out of the affair

is the one that I have indicated. I choose pistols, as the insulted
party."

This was the speech that M. de Bargeton had ruminated on the way; it
was the longest that he had ever made in life. He brought it out

without excitement or vehemence, in the simplest way in the world.
Stanislas turned pale. "After all, what did I see?" said he to

himself.
Put between the shame of eating his words before the whole town, and

fear, that caught him by the throat with burning fingers; confronted
by this mute personage, who seemed in no humor to stand nonsense,

Stanislas chose the more remote peril.
"All right. To-morrow morning," he said, thinking that the matter

might be arranged somehow or other.
The three went back to the room. Everybody scanned their faces as they

came in; Chatelet was smiling, M. de Bargeton looked exactly as if he
were in his own house, but Stanislas looked ghastly pale. At the sight

of his face, some of the women here and there guessed the nature of
the conference, and the whisper, "They are going to fight!" circulated

from ear to ear. One-half of the room was of the opinion that
Stanislas was in the wrong, his white face and his demeanor convicted

him of a lie; the other half admired M. de Bargeton's attitude.
Chatelet was solemn and mysterious. M. de Bargeton stayed a few

minutes, scrutinized people's faces, and retired.
"Have you pistols?" Chatelet asked in a whisper of Stanislas, who

shook from head to foot.
Amelie knew what it all meant. She felt ill, and the women flocked

about her to take her into her bedroom. There was a terrific
sensation; everybody talked at once. The men stopped in the drawing-

room, and declared, with one voice, that M. de Bargeton was within his
right.

"Would you have thought the old fogy capable of acting like this?"
asked M. de Saintot.

"But he was a crack shot when he was young," said the pitiless
Jacques. "My father often used to tell me of Bargeton's exploits."

"Pooh! Put them at twenty paces, and they will miss each other if you
give them cavalrypistols," said Francis, addressing Chatelet.

Chatelet stayed after the rest had gone to reassure Stanislas and his
wife, and to explain that all would go off well. In a duel between a

man of sixty and a man of thirty-five, all the advantage lay with the
latter.

Early next morning, as Lucien sat at breakfast with David, who had
come back alone from Marsac, in came Mme. Chardon with a scared face.

"Well, Lucien," she said, "have you heard the news? Everyone is
talking of it, even the people in the market. M. de Bargeton all but

killed M. de Chandour this morning in M. Tulloy's meadow; people are
making puns on the name. (Tue Poie.) It seems that M. de Chandour said

that he found you with Mme. de Bargeton yesterday."
"It is a lie! Mme. de Bargeton is innocent," cried Lucien.

"I heard about the duel from a countryman, who saw it all from his
cart. M. de Negrepelisse came over at three o'clock in the morning to

be M. de Bargeton's second; he told M. de Chandour that if anything