student said, “It would not be quite polite; these now in the windows all have red hilts or blue; they will bring in some with white hilts presently, and those you can handle freely.  “When a sword was broken in the first duel, I wanted a piece of it; but its hilt was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest to await a properer season.  It was brought to me after the room was cleared, and I will now make a “life-size” sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, to show the width of the weapon. [Figure 1] The length of these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy.  One’s disposition to cheer, during the course of the duels or at their close, was naturally strong, but corps etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort.  However brilliant a contest or a victory might be, no sign or sound betrayed that any one was moved.  A dignified gravity and repression were maintained at all times.

When the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, the gentlemen of the Prussian Corps to whom we had been introduced took off their caps in the courteous German way, and also shook hands; their brethren of the same order took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands; the gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as they would have treated white caps—­they fell apart, apparently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway, but did not seem to see us or know we were there.  If we had gone thither the following week as guests of another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense, would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored our presence.

[How strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life!  I had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one—­a duel with no effeminate limitation in the matter of results, but a battle to the death.  An account of it, in the next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun, and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.]

Chapter VIII
The Great French Duel
[I Second Gambetta in a Terrific Duel]

Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day.  Since it is always fought in the open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold.  M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most inveterate of the French duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in Paris has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more—­unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts cannot intrude—­he will eventually endanger his life.  This ought to moderate the talk of those people who are so stubborn in maintaining that the French duel is the most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air exercise it affords.  And it ought also to moderate that foolish talk about French duelists and socialist-hated monarchs being the only people who are immoral.