, however, was
serious was that, on the morning of the encounter, de Beauvallon had
gone to a shooting gallery and had some private practice with the very
pistols that were afterwards used. This gave him an unfair advantage.
"If," was the advocate's final effort to win a verdict, "M. de
Beauvallon is acquitted, the result will be not only a victory for an
improperly conducted duel, but the very custom of the duel itself will
be dishonoured by such a decision."

Leon Duval having sat down, the President turned to the defendant's
counsel.

"The word is with you, M. Berryer," he said.

Maitre Berryer, a master of forensic oratory, began his address by
contending that duelling was not prohibited by the law of France. In
support he quoted Guizot's dictum: "Where the barbarian murders, the
Frenchman seeks honourable combat; legislation on the subject is
profitless; and this must be the case, since the duel is the
complement of modern civilization."

The judges were unprepared to accept this view off-hand; and, after
consulting with the assessors, the President insisted that, whatever
M. Berryer might say, duelling was illegal in France. Although he did
not tell him so, it was also quite as illegal in England, where Lord
Cardigan had, a little earlier, only just wriggled out of a conviction
for taking part in one by a combination of false swearing and the
subservience of his brother peers.

Not in the least upset, M. Berryer advanced another point. As might
have been expected of so accomplished an advocate, he had little
difficulty in demolishing the elaborate, but specious and unsupported,
hypothesis built up by the other side. Hard facts did more with the
stolid and unimaginative Rouen jury than did picturesque embroideries.

"Is the accusation true?" demanded the President.

"On my honour and on my conscience, before God and before man,"
announced the foreman, "the declaration of the jury is that it is not
true."

As a result of this finding, de Beauvallon was acquitted of the charge
of murder. But he did not escape without penalty, for he was ordered
to pay 20,000 francs "compensation" to the mother and Dujarier's
relatives.

"He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." Convinced
that there had been a miscarriage of justice and a vast amount of
false swearing, the dead man's friends set to work to collect other
evidence. By a stroke of luck, they got into touch with a gardener,
who said that he ha