III.
“Situations requiring nerve and self-control undoubtedly occur in a duel with pistols, but similar situations, more trying and more critical, occur in a duel with swords. You are willing to admit them in the one case, yet you refuse to admit them in the other.”
“But, after all,” persisted my critic, “you can hardly strike a man, who is so utterly done that he can hardly keep his point up.”
“Quite true; but do you feel that hesitation, when you raise your pistol to fire on a man who has emptied his barrels? Do you not say, and with perfect justice, ‘I have stood his fire, it is his turn now to stand mine’? Yet the cases are strictly parallel. In each case you have taken the risk and have escaped unhurt, and the empty pistol in your opponent’s hand is more completely spent than a sword in a hand that is nerveless from fatigue. For no power can recharge the pistol with the ball that has sped, but on the contrary a man with a sword in his hand may possibly by a supreme effort pull himself together, and dangerous to the last strike you before you can strike him.
“But here, as usual, fashion refuses to be logical, and the sentiment of chivalry, which we look for in all right-minded men, does not nowadays allow us to make use of an advantage, which some day or other, perhaps in precisely identical circumstances, may very likely be claimed without scruple.