"No, no, fire!" he cried.
"He is ein Zazar!" exclaimed the baron, in his admiration of Raymond's
courage.
I was desirous to ascertain the truth. My second still lay at full
length on the ground; Monsieur de Witcheritche had thought it better to
retire to a considerable distance, behind a clump of trees; my adversary
turned his head aside, waiting for me to take aim, which I had no
purpose of doing, although convinced that his weapons were not
dangerous; but the baron's cheeses were within two yards of me, and I
discharged my pistol at them. The explosion blew the three-cornered hat
away, and a multitude of scraps of paper adhered to the little
Neufchâtels. While I was laughing over the end of my duel, Raymond came
toward me with outstretched hand, shouting at a distance:
"It's all settled, my friend; I am satisfied, embrace me!"
"What!" said I; "you don't want another shot? I have pistols, too."
"No, my dear fellow, let's forget it all; embrace me, I beg you."
"So be it; I will do whatever is agreeable to you."
While my neighbor threw himself into my arms, the baron ran to his
cheeses, and was like one turned to stone when he saw that they were all
speckled with bits of paper.
"Mein jheese, tay shmell ov te bowder lige te teffel!" he said, putting
his nose to them.
"A thousand pardons, monsieur le baron; but as I did not wish to fire at
my friend Raymond, I aimed in this direction; the bullet must have gone
through them."
Raymond flushed to his ears; my ironical manner led him to fear that I
had detected his little fraud; but I did not care to deprive him of the
pleasure of being able to say everywhere that he had fought a duel. I
ran to my second, who was still on the ground, and urged him to rise;
he did not stir, and I saw that the poor devil had swooned during our
battle. I called Raymond to my assistance; he had a flask of strong
aromatic vinegar in his pocket, with which we inundated Vauvert's face,
and he finally came to himself. After feeling himself all over and
making sure that he was not wounded, he tried to make us think that his
swoon was caused by his affection for us both. We thanked him and set
him on his legs; but we had to take an arm each to help him to walk; for
he was in no condition to stand erect without our support.
Monsieur de Witcheritche put the remains of his cheeses in his pocket
handkerchief, and we left the wood. The rain continued, but my second
could not walk fast, so that we were compelled to endure it. Raymond was
in the highest spirits; he was overjoyed by his day's experience. He
knew Vauvert, and he was sure that his duel would soon be the absorbing
topic of the whole company of amateur musicians, even if he himself
should not take pains to spread it everywhere.
"You showed extraordinary courage, messieurs," said Vauvert, as we
marched along; "such sang-froid! such calmness! that was true valor!"
"Oh! yez! yez! tese two chentlemens pe fery prave."
"Oh! my neighbor Raymond's not like other men; I am sure that he would
fight the same way ten times a day."
Raymond bowed, but said nothing. I fancied that he realized that I knew
how his pistols were loaded.
At last, we spied madame la baronne seated under a large tree; her
husband ran to her and took her arm, and we walked toward the barrier.
"I haf mooch abbetide," said Madame de Witcheritche to her husband.
"Ve vill tine soon, matame."
The couple bowed to us and quickened their pace. I presumed that they
were on the lookout for a restaurant; but I noticed that, all the way
from the barrier, two huge dogs had been following monsieur le baron,
who did all that he could to drive them away, but to no purpose.
"Do those two dogs belong to Monsieur le Baron de Witcheritche?" I asked
Vauvert.
"No, I don't think so; I never saw at his place anything but poodles."
"It's strange," said Raymond; "he must have something in his pocket that
attracts them."
I looked for a cab, but the rain had caused them all to be taken up. We
had lost sight of Monsieur de Witcheritche and his wife, when we heard
loud cries, and soon saw the two dogs running for their lives, one with
a bologna sausage, the other with a bit of salt pork in its mouth. The
baron and baroness came running after them, crying:
"Shtop tief! shtop tief! Ach! te file peasts! tey haf shtole our
tinner!"
Madame la baronne, being weaker than her husband, was obliged to stop,
and told us how the two dogs had succeeded in extracting from monsieur
le baron's pocket the dinner she and her dear spouse, who had been a
long time arranging that little outing for her, expected to eat in the
country.
While we were consoling the poor woman, Monsieur de Witcheritche, who
was not the man to abandon his sausage and his pork, kept on in pursuit
of the dogs, at which he threw all the stones he could find on the
road. He had already wounded one and compelled it to slacken its pace.
Hoping to hit the other, which was just passing the barrier, he threw a
great stone at it with all his force. But the stone was ill-aimed, and,
instead of striking the dog, struck the customs clerk in the eye, as he
was looking up at the sky to see if the storm were passing away.
The poor man fell, crying:
"I am dead!"
His comrades ran to him. One of the dogs, which was then passing the
city limits, ran among the clerks' legs and made them stagger. The
second dog, trying to escape, was seized by monsieur le baron, who
thought of nothing but his dinner and pursued his course, unmindful of
anything else. He succeeded in catching the dog by the tail, and a
battle ensued between him and the animal, which refused to give up the
sausage. The soldiers from the neighboring post ran up in response to
the outcries of the clerks. The vehicles of all kinds passing in or out
were compelled to stop; the soldiers would allow no one to pass until
they had found out what the matter was. A crowd gathered to see what was
going on, and everyone put forward some conjecture.
"It's an important prisoner whom they arrested just as he was leaving
the city," said one, "and it seems that he wounded the clerk who seized
him."
"No; they've just discovered some contraband goods in one of those
wagons; it was being smuggled in."
Amid the tumult, which was augmented by the barking of the dogs, the
baron shouted triumphantly:
"I haf him! I haf him!" and he waved aloft the bologna sausage, which he
had snatched from his enemy's jaws; then, before the poor devil whose
eye he had put out had recovered consciousness, Monsieur de Witcheritche
slipped into the crowd and returned to his wife, leaving the clerks,
soldiers, and bystanders asking one another what it was all about.
Madame la baronne had recovered her husband, Vauvert was in a condition
to walk unaided, and Raymond began to play the dandy. I left the company
and took a cab to return to Paris.