him, he would be done. He made great play with his foot-work, skipping
round his big opponent and pommelling every inch of his anatomy that
he could reach, and successfully dodging the smashing blows that his
slow-moving antagonist tried to deal him. Suddenly, and quite
unexpectedly, the big Frenchman collapsed. The Duc de Vallombrosa took
his defeat in the most sportsmanlike fashion, but he remembered who
had originally proposed the match.

A week later my father was riding home from a picnic with some
ladies. As their horses were tired, he proposed that they should save
a long round by riding along the railway line and over a railway
bridge. The Due de Vallombrosa heard of this. Some few nights later
two gendarmes in full uniform appeared at our villa after dark, and
the bigger of the two demanded in the most peremptory fashion to be
taken in to my father at once, leaving the younger one to watch the
front door, where we could all see him marching up and down. When
ushered in to my father, the gendarme, a huge, fiercely bearded man,
adopted the most truculent manner. It had come to the knowledge of the
police, he said, that my father had ridden on horse-back over a
railway bridge, and along the line. Did he admit it? My father at once
owned that he had done so, but pleaded ignorance, should he have
broken any rule. Ignorance was no excuse, retorted the gendarme, even
foreigners were supposed to know the law. The big bearded gendarme,
whose tone became more hectoring and bullying every moment, went on to
say that my father had broken Article 382 of the French Penal Code, a
very serious offence indeed, punishable with from three to six months'
imprisonment. My father smiled, and drawing out his pocket-book, said
that he imagined that the offence could be compounded. The stern
officer of the law grew absolutely furious; did my father suppose that
a French gendarme could be bribed into forgetting his duty? He would