Return to Lord Kew

We do not propose to describe at length or with precision the circumstances of the duel¹ which ended so unfortunately for young Lord Kew. The meeting was inevitable²: after the public acts and insult of the morning, the maddened Frenchman went to it convinced that his antagonist³ had wilfully⁴ outraged⁵ him, eager to show his bravery upon the body of an Englishman, and as proud as if he had been going into actual war. That commandment, the sixth in our decalogue, which forbids the doing of murder, and the injunction which directly follows on the same table, have been repealed⁶ by a very great number of Frenchmen for many years past; and to take the neighbour’s wife, and his life subsequently, has not been an uncommon⁷ practice with the politest people in the world. Castillonnes had no idea but that he was going to the field of honour; stood with an undaunted scowl⁸ before his enemy’s pistol; and discharged his own and brought down his opponent with a grim satisfaction, and a comfortable conviction afterwards that he had acted en galant homme. “It was well for this milor that he fell at the first shot, my dear,” the exemplary young Frenchman remarked; “a second might have been yet more fatal to him; ordinarily I am sure of my coup⁹, and you conceive that in an affair so grave it was absolutely necessary that one or other should remain on the ground.” Nay¹⁰, should M. de Kew recover from his wound, it was M. de Castillonnes’ intention to propose a second encounter between himself and that nobleman. It had been Lord Kew’s determination never to fire upon his opponent, a

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