He remembered Baron de Vaux's book on marksmen, and searched it from end
to end. Georges Lamil was not mentioned. And yet, if he were not an
adept, would he have accepted without demur such a dangerous weapon and
such deadly conditions?

He opened a case of Gastinne Renettes which stood on a small table, and
took from it a pistol. Next he stood in the correct attitude for firing,
and raised his arm. But he was trembling from head to foot, and the
weapon shook in his grasp.

Then he said to himself:

"It is impossible. I cannot fight like this."

He looked at the little black, death-spitting hole at the end of the
pistol; he thought of dishonor, of the whispers at the clubs, the smiles
in his friends' drawing-rooms, the contempt of women, the veiled sneers
of the newspapers, the insults that would be hurled at him by cowards.

He still looked at the weapon, and raising the hammer, saw the glitter of
the priming below it. The pistol had been left loaded by some chance,
some oversight. And the discovery rejoiced him, he knew not why.

If he did not maintain, in presence of his opponent, the steadfast
bearing which was so necessary to his honor, he would be ruined forever.
He would be branded, stigmatized as a coward, hounded out of society! And
he felt, he knew, that he could not maintain that calm, unmoved demeanor.
And yet he was brave, since the thought that followed was not even
rounded to a finish in his mind; but, opening his mouth wide, he suddenly
plunged the barrel of the pistol as far back as his throat, and pressed