call myself a dramatist."

"Just so," was the caustic response, "but there are degrees among
dramatists."

Taking this for encouragement, Dumas launched out into a disquisition
on the history of the duello through the ages that was nearly as long
as one of his own serials. In the middle of it, a member of the jury,
anxious to be in the limelight, asked him a question.

"How does it happen," he enquired, "that Dujarier, who considered that
a man of fashion must fight at least one duel, had never prepared
himself by learning to shoot and fence?"

"I cannot tell you," was the reply. "My son, however, told me that he
once accompanied him to a shooting-gallery. Out of twenty shots, he
only hit the target twice."

Dumas made an exit as dramatic as his entry.

"I beg," he said, "that the honourable Court will permit me to return
to Paris, where I have a new tragedy in five acts being performed this
evening."

Lola Montez, garbed in heavy mourning, was the next summoned to give
evidence.

"When," says one who was there, "she lifted her veil and removed her
glove, to take the prescribed oath, a murmur of admiration ran through
the gathering." To this an impressed reporter adds: "Her lovely eyes
appeared to the judges of a deeper black than her lace ruffles."

The presiding judge had no qualms about enquiring her age; and she had
none about lopping five years off it and declaring that she was just
twenty-one. Nor did she advance any objection to being described, with
Gallic candour, as the "mistress of Dujarier."

During her evidence, Lola Montez, probably coached by Dumas, did just
what was expected of her. Thus, she shed abundant tears, struck
pathetic attitudes, and several times looked on the point of
collapsing. But what she had to say amounted to very little. In fact,
it was nothing more than an assertion that ill-feeling existed between
Dujarier and de Cassagnac, the brother-in-law of de Beauvallon, and
that the quarrel was connected with an alleged debt.

Dujarier, she said, had forbidden her to make de Beauvallon's
acquaintance, or to attend the supper at the restaurant. He had
returned from it in an excited condition at 6 o'clock the next morning
and told her that he would have to accept a challenge.

"I was troubled about it," she said, "all day long. But for M.
Bertrand's assurance that the encounter was to be with M. de Beauvoir,
I would have gone to the police. You see, de Beauvoir was a
high-minde