have been thrown out of the window. But I changed my mind and
preferred to beat a resentful retreat.

I went out of the tavern straight home, confused and troubled, and the
next night I went out again with the same lewd intentions, still more
furtively, abjectly and miserably than before, as it were, with tears in my
eyes--but still I did go out again. Don't imagine, though, it was coward-
ice made me slink away from the officer; I never have been a coward at
heart, though I have always been a coward in action. Don't be in a hurry
to laugh--I assure you I can explain it all.

Oh, if only that officer had been one of the sort who would consent to
fight a duel! But no, he was one of those gentlemen (alas, long extinct!)
who preferred fighting with cues or, like Gogol's Lieutenant Pirogov,
appealing to the police. They did not fight duels and would have thought
a duel with a civilian like me an utterly unseemly procedure in any
case--and they looked upon the duel altogether as something impossible,
something free-thinking and French. But they were quite ready to
bully, especially when they were over six foot.

I did not slink away through cowardice, but through an unbounded
vanity. I was afraid not of his six foot, not of getting a sound thrashing and
being thrown out of the window; I should have had physical courage
enough, I assure you; but I had not the moral courage. What I was afraid of
was that everyone present, from the insolent marker down to the lowest
little stinking, pimply clerk in a greasy collar, would jeer at me and fail to
understand when I began to protest and to address them in literary language.
For of the point of honour--not of honour, but of the point of
honour (POINT D'HONNEUR)--one cannot speak among us except in literary
language. You can't allude to the "point of honour" in ordinary language.