If, under the French system, the creditor was bound to maintain the debtor, the debtor, on his side, was denied the liberties accorded to him in England. Here a man who refused to pay his debts might be detained as long as the creditor wished without any charge to the latter; but here, also, the debtor might lead a luxurious life, and even leave the prison day after day on condition only of returning by a certain hour at night. To live “within the rules” of the Queen’s Bench was simply to inhabit an unfashionable and remote part of London, with the additional obligation of getting home early every night. A former manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre—King’s Theatre, as it was then called—passed several years in the Queen’s Bench Prison. This gentleman, Taylor by name, maintained, indeed, that it was the only place where an operatic manager could live so as to be quite beyond the reach of tenors dissatisfied with their parts, and prime donne clamouring for new dresses and increased salaries. In fact, he once declared, it was the only place where a man so rash as to undertake an {344} operatic speculation ought to be allowed to live, since no such person was fit to be at large.
Close to the Clichy district is the more important one of Les Batignolles, a growth of the present century and, one may almost say, of the last half-century. The village of Les Batignolles has developed into a town, inhabited for the most part by retired tradesmen and small annuitants. Close, again, to the Batignolles is the beautiful Parc Monceau, with its Avenue de Villiers, favourite abode of so many painters of the modern school.
We are now once more in the neighbourhood of the Champs Élysées, with its picturesque avenues, its children, its popular theatres, and its cafés without number. Once more, too, we are in the vicinity of that Bois de Boulogne, with its beautiful drives, its luxurious restaurants, its enchanting lake, and its forest renowned for duels.{345}
CHAPTER XXXII.
PARIS DUELS.
The Legal Institution of the Duel—The Congé de la Bataille—in the Sixteenth Century—Jarnac—Famous Duels.
PARISIAN duels are no longer to the death. As a rule, one of the combatants receives a scratch, and the farce is at an end. The story is well known of a Paris journalist’s wife, who, alarmed by the sudden disappearance of her husband, continued for a long time to fret and worry about him, until a friend of his told her that he had gone into the country to fight a duel, whereupon she exclaimed: “Thank Heaven! Then he is safe.”
From antiquity, however, until very recent times duels in Paris and in France generally have been only too sanguinary. The French first learned duelling from a ferocious nation. The ancient Franks, in invading Gaul, established there what was known as the “judicial combat.” Previously, in their own country, it had been a custom amongst the Franks for an individual who had suffered any private wrong, serious or trivial, to wreak a personal vengeance on the offender, inflicting death, or no matter what bodily injury, in the most barbarous fashion. At length the law intervened and instituted formal combat between the parties at {346} strife—a custom which, in due course, was introduced by the Franks into conquered Gaul. In the regulations of Philippe le Bel, 1306, it is set forth:—
“That the lists shall be forty feet in width and eighty feet in length.