"Come, let us re-load our arms," I said, flinging my pistol at the boy's feet, "and let us stay in our places, which will be a saving of time."
Let me be allowed, in conclusion, to substitute the written statement of the proceedings for my own recital. My feet, as when I sustained M. Gaillardet's fire, still seemed glued where I stood.
"BOIS DE VINCENNES, 17 October 1834,
2.45 P.M."After the drawing up of our first note, the adversaries were placed at fifty paces apart, with power to advance each to within fifteen paces of one another. M. Gaillardet reached the limit and fired the first; M. Dumas fired second; neither of the shots went home. M. Dumas then declared he did not wish matters to end there, and demanded that the combat should be continued until the death of one of the two. M. Gaillardet acceded; but the seconds refused to re-load the arms. Whereupon M. Dumas proposed to continue the duel with swords. M. Gaillardet's seconds refused. Then M. Dumas urged that pistols should be re-loaded; but the seconds, after a long deliberation, and having tried to overcome his obstinacy, did not feel they could lend their countenance to a contest which could not but end fatally. Consequently the seconds withdrew and carried off the arms, and this withdrawal put an end to the duel.
"FONTAN, SOULIÉ, MAILLAN, DE LONGPRÉ"
The seconds withdrew, and I found myself alone with M. Gaillardet, Bixio and the brother of M. Gaillardet, who had come through the wood just as the firing took place. I then proposed to M. Gaillardet, as we now had two seconds and two swords, to make use of both men and arms. He refused. Thereupon Bixio and I got into the carriage and returned by the road to Paris.[1]
We set out by mail-coach a couple of hours later for Rouen, with Fontan and Dupeuty.
Bixio was twice again my second; but one of the two duels was with swords, and the other not taking place at all, he had not the chance of assuring himself as to whether a man wounded or killed by a bullet turns round before he falls. He had to make the experiment on himself.
In the month of June 1848, as, in his capacity of representative of the people, Bixio was walking with his customary courage by the Panthéon barricade, a bullet, fired from the first floor of a house in the rue Soufflot, hit him above the collar-bone, ploughed into his right lung, and, after a course of fifteen to eighteen inches, lodged near the spine. Bixio turned round three times and fell.
"Without any doubt of it one turns round!" he said. The problem was solved.