When the ceremony of the pacing was over the two unfortunate gentlemen were put facing each other, but twisted, with the right side of the one turning to the corresponding side of the other, so as to afford the smallest target for the deadly missiles; and then one of the seconds who held the handkerchief retired to some little distance to give the signal.
It was at this juncture, as Mr. Newman and Mr. Bilbury stood with their pistols elevated towards heaven, and waiting for the handkerchief to drop, each concentrated with a violent concentration upon the emotions of the moment, that a prodigious noise of hammering and shouting was heard at one of the doors of the enclosure, and that three gentlemen—the one wearing a large three-coloured sash, the like of which neither Mr. Bilbury nor Mr. Newman had ever seen—entered, and ordered the whole party to desist in the name of the law. So summoned, the audience with the utmost precipitation climbed over the wall, forced itself through the gates, and in every manner at its disposal vanished. And the gentleman with the tri-coloured sash, sitting down in the calmest manner upon one of the trestles and turning the coffin over by way of making a table, declared himself a public officer, and took notes of all that had occurred. It was interesting to see the businesslike way in which the seconds gave evidence, and the courtesy with which the two principals were treated as distinguished foreigners by the gentleman with the three-coloured sash. He was young, like all the rest, amazingly young for a public official of such importance, but collected and evidently most efficient. When he had done taking his notes he stood up in a half-military fashion, ranged Mr. Newman and Mr. Bilbury before him, and very rapidly read out a series of legal sentences, at the conclusion of which was a fine of one hundred francs apiece, and no more said about the matter. Mr. Bilbury and Mr. Newman were astonished that attempted homicide should cost so little in this singular country. They were still more astonished to discover that etiquette demanded a genial reconciliation of the two combatants under such circumstances, and they were positively amazed to find after that reconciliation that they were compatriots.
It was their seconds who insisted upon standing the dinner that evening. The whole incident was very happily over save for one passing qualm which Mr. Bilbury felt (and Mr. Newman also) when he saw the gentleman, whom he had last met as the tri-coloured official of the Republic, passing through the restaurant singing at the top of his voice and waving his hand genially to the group as he went out upon the boulevard.
But they remembered that in democracies the office is distinguished from the man. Luckily for democracies.
On a Battle, or “Journalism,” or “Points of View”
“The art of historical writing is rendered the less facile in expression from I know not what personal differences which the most honest will admit into their record of events, and the most observant wilt permit to colour the picture proceeding from their pens.” (Extract from the Judicious Essay of a Gentleman in Holy Orders, author of A History of Religious Differences.)