now to exchange pistol-shot? For
Cazales, chief of the Royalists, whom we call 'Blacks or Noirs,' said,
in a moment of passion, "the Patriots were sheer Brigands," nay in
so speaking, he darted or seemed to dart, a fire-glance specially
at Barnave; who thereupon could not but reply by fire-glances,--by
adjournment to the Bois-de-Boulogne. Barnave's second shot took effect:
on Cazales's hat. The 'front nook' of a triangular Felt, such as mortals
then wore, deadened the ball; and saved that fine brow from more than
temporary injury. But how easily might the lot have fallen the other
way, and Barnave's hat not been so good! Patriotism raises its loud
denunciation of Duelling in general; petitions an august Assembly to
stop such Feudal barbarism by law. Barbarism and solecism: for will it
convince or convict any man to blow half an ounce of lead through the
head of him? Surely not.--Barnave was received at the Jacobins with
embraces, yet with rebukes.

Mindful of which, and also that his repetition in America was that of
headlong foolhardiness rather, and want of brain not of heart, Charles
Lameth does, on the eleventh day of November, with little emotion,
decline attending some hot young Gentleman from Artois, come expressly
to challenge him: nay indeed he first coldly engages to attend; then
coldly permits two Friends to attend instead of him, and shame the
young Gentleman out of it, which they successfully do. A cold procedure;
satisfactory to the two Friends, to Lameth and the hot young Gentleman;
whereby, one might have fancied, the whole matter was cooled down.

Not so, however: Lameth, proceeding to his senatorial duties, in the
decline of the day, is met in those Assembly corridors by nothing but
Royalist brocards; sniffs, huffs, and open insults. Human patience has
its limits: "Monsieur," said Lameth, breaking silence to one Lautrec,
a man with hunchback, or natural deformity, but sharp of tongue, and
a Black of the deepest tint, "Monsieur, if you were a man to be fought
with!"--"I am one," cries the young Duke de Castries. Fast as fire-flash
Lameth replies, "Tout a l'heure, On the instant, then!" And so, as the
shades of dusk thicken in that Bois-de-Boulogne, we behold two men with
lion-look, with alert attitude, side foremost, right foot advanced;
flourishing and thrusting, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart;
intent to skewer one another. See, with most skewering purpose, headlong
Lameth, with his whole