This bracing treatment suited him so
well, that at the first rumour of an armistice being signed he could
turn without misgivings to the thoughts of his private warfare.
This time it was to be regular warfare. He sent two friends to Lieut.
D'Hubert, whose regiment was stationed only a few miles away. Those
friends had asked no questions of their principal. "I owe him one, that
pretty staff officer," he had said, grimly, and they went away quite
contentedly on their mission. Lieut. D'Hubert had no difficulty in
finding two friends equally discreet and devoted to their principal.
"There's a crazy fellow to whom I must give a lesson," he had declared
curtly; and they asked for no better reasons.
On these grounds an encounter with duelling-swords was arranged one
early morning in a convenient field. At the third set-to Lieut. D'Hubert
found himself lying on his back on the dewy grass with a hole in his
side. A serene sun rising over a landscape of meadows and woods hung on
his left. A surgeon--not the flute player, but another--was bending over
him, feeling around the wound.
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