"To ask some one else to be my friend."

"So I am no longer your friend?"

"No, since you think I am a coward."

"Very well," said the young man rising.

"You will go?"

"I am going."

"At once?"

"At once."

"Ah!" exclaimed the child, "I beg your pardon; you are indeed
my friend." And he fell upon his neck weeping. They were the
first tears he had shed since he had received the blow.

Bonaparte went in search of Valence and gravely explained his
mission to him. Valence was a tall lad of seventeen, having already,
like certain precocious natures, a beard and mustache; he appeared
at least twenty. He was, moreover, a head taller than the boy
he had insulted.

Valence replied that Louis had pulled his queue as if it were
a bell-cord (queues were then in vogue)--that he had warned him
twice to desist, but that Louis had repeated the prank the third