remarked with no little
amusement. Barnes began quite well to remember their pleasant days at
Baden, and talked of their acquaintance there: Barnes offered the Prince
the vacant seat in his brougham, and was ready to set him down anywhere
that he wished in town.

"Bah!" says Florac; "we came by the steamer, and I prefer the peniboat."
But the hospitable Barnes, nevertheless, called upon Florac the next
day. And now having partially explained how the Prince de Moncontour
was present at Mr. Barnes Newcome's wedding, let us show how it was that
Barnes's first-cousin, the Earl of Kew, did not attend that ceremony.

CHAPTER XXXVII. Return to Lord Kew

We do not propose to describe at length or with precision the
circumstances of the duel which ended so unfortunately for young Lord
Kew. The meeting was inevitable: after the public acts and insult of the
morning, the maddened Frenchman went to it convinced that his antagonist
had wilfully outraged him, eager to show his bravery upon the body of an
Englishman, and as proud as if he had been going into actual war. That
commandment, the sixth in our decalogue, which forbids the doing of
murder, and the injunction which directly follows on the same table,
have been repealed by a very great number of Frenchmen for many years
past; and to take the neighbour's wife, and his life subsequently, has
not been an uncommon practice with the politest people in the world.
Castillonnes had no idea but that he was going to the field of honour;
stood with an undaunted scowl before his enemy's pistol; and discharged
his own and brought down his opponent with a grim satisfaction, and a
comfortable conviction afterwards that he had acted en galant homme. "It
was well for this milor that he fell at the first shot, my dear," the
exemplary young Frenchman remarked; "a second might have been yet more
fatal to him; ordinarily I am sure of my coup, and you conceive that in
an affair so grave it was absolutely necessary that one or other should
remain on the ground." Nay, should M. de Kew recover from his wound, it
was M. de Castillonnes' intention to propose a second encounter between
himself and that nobleman. It had been Lord Kew's determination never
to fire upon his opponent, a confession which he made not to his second,
poor scared Lord Rooster, who bore the young Earl to Kehl, but to some
of his nearest relatives, who happened fortunately to be not far from
him when he received his woun