I had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing
those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it
necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist
personally at a real one--a duel with no effeminate
limitation in the matter of results, but a battle
to the death. An account of it, in the next chapter,
will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun,
and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.]



CHAPTER VIII
The Great French Duel
[I Second Gambetta in a Terrific Duel]

Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain
smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous
institutions of our day. Since it is always fought in the
open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold.
M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most inveterate of the French
duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at
last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in Paris
has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for
fifteen or twenty years more--unless he forms the habit
of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts
cannot intrude--he will eventually endanger his life.
This ought to moderate the talk of those people who are
so stubborn in maintaining that the French duel is the
most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air
exercise it affords. And it ought also to moderate that