The journalist Titusz Finedwell was sentenced to death by the Casino's board of directors in the chamber where members held their confidential meetings, sessions of the court of honor, tribunals of the dueling code-the chamber where, once upon a time, at the festivities held in honor of Albert, Prince of Wales, gentlemen ended up going at each other with champagne bottles, and grabbed the Gypsy musicians' violins and wind instruments to beat on each other. After that dark event the chamber saw no further carousing, and became dedicated to the service of honor. The destinies of rooms can change just like those of their human occupants. Only women can be as shamelessly fickle as rooms.
In his newspaper Finedwell had published an article offensive to the Casino, and for this he had to die. To execute the sentence the Casino delegated from among its members a retired colonel of Hussars, P.E.G., known as the best shot in all of Hungary. With that, the fate of the journalist was sealed. He might as well start giving away his worldly belongings (if he possessed any), for soon he would no longer need anything.
This time Finedwell did not have to invent the usual family disaster to request an advance from his employer. An advance has a way of reconciling a journalist with both life and death.
Having received the advance, the journalist lost no time leaving Elderberry Street where for years he had struggled at a recalcitrant desk with cheap pens and watery ink, in ever more refractory attempts at producing copy that always refused to materialize just when Finedwell intended to write his finest articles. With the advance in his pocket Finedwell decided he would die like a gentleman. Let's see how Finedwell, facing imminent death, went about transforming himself into a gentleman.

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Translated by John Batki