The prince de Lixen bowed his head in the affirmative, and repeated word for word the phrase he had uttered.
It was so insolently done that there was no way out of it. M. de Richelieu bowed to the prince de Lixen and clapped his hand to his sword.
The prince followed suit.
The prince de Pont naturally was obliged to be his brother's second, and my grandfather Richelieu's.
A minute later M. de Richelieu plunged his sword through the body of the prince de Lixen, who fell back stone dead into the arms of the prince de Pont.[1]
Fifty-five years had gone by since this event. M. de Richelieu, the oldest of the marshals of France, had been in 1781 appointed president of the Tribunal of Affairs of Honour, in his eighty-fifth year.
He would therefore be eighty-seven when the anecdote we are about to relate took place.
My father would be twenty-two.
My father was one night at the theatre of la Montansier in undress, in the box of a very beautiful Creole who was the rage at the time. Whether on account of the lady's immense popularity or because of his imperfect toilet, he kept at the back of the box.