Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 5.djvu/236

214 proceed. He raised his pistol and took aim. . I was counting the seconds.

I was thinking of her. . . . All this lasted a full minute and suddenly Silvio lowered his weapon.

"'I am very sorry,' he said, ' but my pistol is not loaded with cherry pits . . . and bullets are hard. . . . After all, come to think of it, this does not look much like a duel. It is more like a murder. I am not in the habit of firing on an unarmed man. Let us begin all over again. Let us draw lots to see who will shoot first.'

"My head was in a whirl and it turns out that I refused at first. Finally, we loaded our pistols and we put two papers in the very cap I had once perforated with a bullet. I took one of the papers and as luck would have it, I drew number one.

"'You are devilish lucky, Count!' said he, with a smile I will never forget.

"I can not to this day understand it, but he finally compelled me to draw fire, . . . and my bullet hit that picture there."

The Count pointed to the landscape with the hole in it. His face was crimson. There was the Countess as white as a sheet, and as for me I barely suppressed a cry.