‘It is I—it is I who deserve death!’ cried Madame de L——; ‘kill me!’
I added my cries to theirs. I shouted, I shook the grating. I tried to scale the wall, when suddenly, urged on by despair, bewildered, distracted, Madame de L—— threw herself from the window and fell between her lover and her husband. The latter, completely beside himself with passion, directed his sword toward her. But Ernest turned it aside, and in his turn casting off all restraint, exclaimed with vehemence: ‘Madman! would you kill her? Well, then—defend yourself!’ And immediately he commenced a violent assault upon his antagonist.
I could do nothing to separate them; neither could Madame de L——. The unfortunate woman had broken a limb in the fall, and lay groaning upon the pavement. It was a dreadful combat. Nothing can express the violent terror which seized me. Already the blood of the two cousins began to flow, which only served to increase their rage. I had succeeded with some difficulty in climbing to the top of the wall, and was about to leap into the court, when I perceived some of our friends approaching. Ganguernet was at their head; he drew near, calling to me:
‘Halloo! what’s this? Why, you bawl like a man getting flayed; we heard you a quarter of a league off. What the devil is the matter?’
At the sight of this detested wretch, I rushed upon him, seized him by the throat, and forcing him violently against the grating, I cried to him in my turn: ‘Look there, miserable jester!—‘a capital joke!’ is it not?—a ‘capital joke!”
Monsieur de L——, pierced through the heart by a plunge of his antagonist’s sword, was lying by the side of his wife.
Ernest has left France to die in a foreign land. Madame de L—— committed suicide the day after this horrible duel.
‘A CAPITAL JOKE!’