The Judge and Wallace Donaldson sit in the former's drawing room, drink amontillado and have a painfully civilized conversation. What makes it painful, on both sides, is that young Mr. Donaldson is about to take away the old judge's young, beautiful wife. The tense meeting is not made more relaxing by the Judge's quotations from Aristotle and Plato. It's even less relaxing when the Judge takes out his pistol.