“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; “Naïs 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. 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 Amélie 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. Châtelet 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.
Châtelet knew what a visit meant at this time of night, when old M. de Bargeton was invariably in his bed. It was evidently Naïs who had set the feeble arm in motion. Châtelet 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 Amélie’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 Châtelet 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 Naïs. 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 Châtelet went to Bargeton.
“Sir,” said the injured husband, “do you say that you discovered Mme. de Bargeton and M. de Rubempré 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 Nègrepelisse, will wait upon you at four o’clock tomorrow 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 hideous 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. Tomorrow 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; Châtelet 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. Châtelet was solemn and mysterious. M. de Bargeton stayed a few minutes, scrutinized people’s faces, and retired.
“Have you pistols?” Châtelet asked in a whisper of Stanislas, who shook from head to foot.
Amélie 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 cavalry pistols,” said Francis, addressing Châtelet.
Châtelet 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
