This speech had so good an effect that my principal immediately stretched forth his hand and said, “I am myself again; give me the weapon.”

I laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the center of the vast solitude of his palm.  He gazed at it and shuddered.  And still mournfully contemplating it, he murmured in a broken voice: 

“Alas, it is not death I dread, but mutilation.”

I heartened him once more, and with such success that he presently said, “Let the tragedy begin.  Stand at my back; do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend.”

I gave him my promise.  I now assisted him to point his pistol toward the spot where I judged his adversary to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and further guide himself by my fellow-second’s whoop.  Then I propped myself against M. Gambetta’s back, and raised a rousing “Whoop-ee!” This was answered from out the far distances of the fog, and I immediately shouted: 

“One—­two—­three—­fire!”

Two little sounds like spit!  Spit! broke upon my ear, and in the same instant I was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh.  Bruised as I was, I was still able to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect: 

“I die for... for ... perdition take it, what is it I die for? ... oh, yes—­France!  I die that France may live!”

The surgeons swarmed around with their probes in their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole area of M. Gambetta’s person, with the happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wound.  Then a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting.

The two gladiators fell upon each other’s neck, with floods of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me; the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with joy unspeakable.

It seems to me then that I would rather be a hero of a French duel than a crowned and sceptered monarch.

When the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there was reason to believe that I would survive my injuries.  My internal hurts were deemed the most serious, since it was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung, and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far to one side or the other of where they belonged, that it was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities.  They then set my left arm in two places, pulled my right hip into its socket again, and re-elevated my nose.  I was an object of great interest, and even admiration; and many sincere and warm-hearted persons had themselves introduced to me, and said they were proud to know the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in forty years.