Nine years later took place the celebrated and sanguinary duel between the Duke de Nemours and the Duke de Beaufort. They quarrelled at Orleans, where Nemours had cried out, in presence of Beaufort, “The prince is being deceived, and I know by whom!” “Name him,” said Beaufort. “You, yourself!” answered Nemours. Beaufort’s reply was a box on the ear, instantly returned by Nemours; and they would at once have crossed swords had not Mlle. de Montpensier been present. On the day fixed for the duel, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the two brothers-in-law seemed to have become reconciled. But some question of precedence revived the bad feeling between them. “M. de Beaufort,” relates the Duchess de Montpensier, “did all he could to avoid the meeting. He set forth, among other reasons, that he had a number of gentlemen with him ready to take part in the duel, while his antagonist had only a few. Monsieur de Nemours returned to his house, where he found awaiting him just as many gentlemen as were required. He went back to M. de Beaufort, and they fought in the horse market, at the back of the Hôtel de Vendôme. M. de Nemours had with him Villiers, the Chevalier de La Chaise, Campan, and Luzerche. M. de Beaufort had the Count de Bury, de Ris, Brillet, and Héricourt. The Count de Bury was severely wounded. De Ris and Héricourt died in the course of the day. None of the others were wounded, except very slightly. M. de Nemours had brought with him swords and pistols. The latter had been loaded at his house. M. de Beaufort said to his adversary: ‘Brother, what a shame! Let us forget and be friends.’ M. de Nemours cried out to him: ‘No, scoundrel! you must kill me or I will kill you.’ He fired his pistol, which missed, and rushed upon M. de Beaufort, sword in hand, so that the latter was obliged to defend himself. He fired, and shot Nemours dead with three balls that were in the pistol.”

Under Louis XIV. no less than twelve edicts were issued against duelling. One of the last, published in 1704, promised lawful satisfaction for outraged honour. To give the lie, to strike with the hand or with a stick, were offences punishable with imprisonment. Anyone who had received a box on the ears was entitled to return it. But the royal commands remained without effect. Among the great duellists of Louis XIV.’s reign must be mentioned the Duke de Richelieu, who did as much to promote duelling as the famous cardinal of the same name had done in the previous reign to prevent it. He not only fought duels himself, but was the cause of duels on the part of others; and of ladies above all. In his various encounters he severely wounded the Duke de Bourbon, ran Prince de Lixen through the body, and killed Baron Pontereider. The two ladies who fought at his instigation were Mme. de Nesle and Mme. de Polignac. “Take the first shot,” said the last-named antagonist. Mme. de Nesle fired and missed. “Anger makes the hand tremble,” observed Mme. de Polignac, with a malicious smile. Taking aim in her turn, she cut off the tip of her adversary’s ear; whereupon poor Mme. de Nesle fell to the ground as if mortally wounded.

Charles Lameth, Mirabeau, and Camille Desmoulins likewise fought duels. Camille Desmoulins had the courage, however, to refuse to settle by arms quarrels of a political kind. "I should have," he said on one occasion, "to pass my life in the Bois de Boulogne if I were obliged to give satisfaction to all who took offence at the frankness of my speech. Let them call me a coward if they like. I fancy the time is not far off when opportunities for dying more gloriously and more usefully will present themselves."

Napoleon did his utmost to stop duelling, but with scarcely more success than his predecessors on the throne. Under the Restoration duels were constantly being fought between the officers of the King's army and Napoleonic officers on half-pay. Benjamin Constant, the famous writer and politician, fought a duel in which, as he was too weak to stand, both antagonists were accommodated with armchairs. This comfortable arrangement was not attended by fatal results. M. Thiers fought a remarkable duel with the father of the young lady to whom he was engaged to be married. Being without means, he wished to postpone the marriage from year to year, till at last the indignant parent insisted on satisfaction. M. Thiers, with the historian Mignet as one of his seconds, received the old gentleman's bullet between his legs without returning the shot. Writers at this period seem to have frequently found themselves compelled to throw down the pen and snatch up the sword or the pistol. General Gourgaud challenged the author of "The History of the Russian Campaign," and slightly wounded him in the duel which ensued. A young cavalry officer, Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire by name, having published a political pamphlet under the title of "Funeral Oration of the Duke de Feltre," was immediately called out by the duke's son. Hardly scratched in the encounter, he was challenged a second time by a cousin of the deceased, who killed him with a sword-thrust in the breast.

M. de Langerie and M. de Montendre, both exceedingly ugly, were drawn up against each other in single combat. Suddenly de Langerie exclaimed: “I cannot fight you. You really must excuse me. I have an invincible reason.” “And what is it, pray?” inquired the foe. “Why, this: if I fight, I shall, to all appearances, kill you, and remain the ugliest man in the kingdom.” De Montendre yielded. A ballad-writer, known by numerous successes, had a quarrel. An intimate friend interposed his authority, ascertained the exact nature of the difference, and promised to settle it. A few moments afterwards he returned. “The affair,” he said “is arranged. I had only to speak and we were instantly agreed.” “That is good,” replied the writer of ballads, visibly relieved. “Yes,” said the amiable intercessor, grasping his friend by the hand; “it is arranged. You fight to-morrow morning at five.”

A fastidious duellist, who was ready to fight about any trifle, “to find a quarrel in a straw,” as Hamlet expresses it, had taken umbrage at something said by an entirely inoffensive man. He sent his seconds to wait upon this person and to say that he would fight him at a distance of twenty-five paces. “I agree,” replied the recipient of the challenge; “but since you have regulated the distance, the choice of arms must rest with me—I name the sword.”

Romieu, renowned for his spirit of pleasantry, received one day, from a barren scribbler who had been educated at the École de Droit, the manuscript of a play accompanied by the following letter: “Sir,—I herewith submit a piece to which I beg you to give your very careful attention. I accept beforehand any alterations which you may think fit to make in it, with this exception—that I am most punctilious about the philosophical reflections remaining untouched.” A few days afterwards the author received back his manuscript with this reply: “Sir,—I have read your work with the greatest attention. I leave to you the choice of arms.” Fortunately it was ink alone, and not blood, which was spilt in the affair.

At the time when Sainte-Beuve was contributing to the Globe he quarrelled with a member of the staff of that journal. A duel was arranged; when the combatants arrived on the ground it was raining in torrents; Sainte-Beuve had come provided with an umbrella and with flint pistols of the sixteenth century. At the moment when the adversaries were to pull their triggers Sainte-Beuve was still carefully shielding himself from the elements with his umbrella. The seconds protested, but Sainte-Beuve refused to get wet. “I don’t mind being killed,” he exclaimed; “but I decline to catch cold.” The duel then proceeded, Sainte-Beuve levelling his pistol with one hand and holding up his umbrella with the other. Four shots were exchanged, but without injury on either side.

Cyrano de Bergerac, of whom mention has already been made, was the most ferocious duellist of his time. His nose, of inordinate length, had received such a number of dents that it was quite a curiosity. He was very touchy on this subject, and would allow no one to look at him pointedly. More than ten men expiated with their lives some satirical glance at him, or some ill-sounding word uttered in his presence.

A certain bravo challenged an apothecary, by whom he conceived himself insulted. The duel was arranged, and the adversaries duly met, each accompanied by two seconds. One of the seconds of the aggrieved man held out a pair of swords, and the other a brace of pistols.

“Sir,” cried the bravo, “choose weapons. Pistol and sword are the same thing to me.” “That is all very well,” replied the apothecary, “but I do not see why you should impose your arms upon me; I think I have as much right, and more, to impose mine on you.” “Good. What are your arms?” was the reply. The apothecary took a little box from his pocket, opened it, and presented it to his adversary. “There are two pills,” he said: “one is poisoned and the other harmless. Choose!” The affair ended in laughter.

Voltaire had recourse to a custom which he had himself energetically condemned. Dining one day at the Duke de Sully’s, he happened, in the course of a discussion, to raise his voice a little. “Who is that young man contradicting me so loudly?” asked the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot. “He is a man,” replied Voltaire, “who does not boast a great name, but who honours the name he bears.” The chevalier did not reply, but a few days afterwards he caused Voltaire to be waylaid and beaten by half a dozen ruffians. After having vainly tried to persuade the Duke de Sully to espouse his cause, Voltaire determined to trust solely to his own personal courage. He took fencing-lessons, and as soon as he was able to handle a sword, waited upon the chevalier in his box at the Théâtre Français. “Sir,” he said, “unless some business affair has caused you to forget the insult which I suffered at your hands, I hope you will afford me satisfaction.” This was one of those arrows, barbed with irony, which Voltaire knew so well how to throw. “Some business affair” was a phrase which the chevalier could not decently bear. He accepted the challenge, but without intending to fight. Instead of crossing swords with the young poet he caused him to be thrown into the Bastille for having presumed to call out so great a personage.

That most amiable of men, La Fontaine, once persuaded himself, or rather allowed himself to be persuaded, that he ought to be jealous of his wife. The circumstances were these. He was on terms of close friendship with an old captain of dragoons, retired from service, named Poignant; a gentleman distinguished by candour and good nature. So much time as Poignant did not spend at the tavern he passed at the house of La Fontaine, and often in the society of his wife when the poet happened not to be at home. One day someone asked La Fontaine how it was that he permitted Poignant to visit him every day. “Why should he not? he is my best friend,” was the reply. “That is scarcely what the public say. They maintain that he only goes to see Mme. La Fontaine.” “The public are wrong. But what ought I to do in the matter?” “You must demand satisfaction, sword in hand, of the man who has dishonoured you.” “Very well,” said the fabulist, “satisfaction I will demand.” On the morrow, at four in the morning, he called upon Poignant, whom he found in bed. “Get up,” he said, “and let us go out together.” His friend asked why he wanted him, and what urgent affair had brought La Fontaine out of bed at such an hour. “I will tell you,” was the answer, “after we have gone hence.” Poignant, quite mystified, arose, dressed, and then inquired to what place the poet was taking him. “You will soon see,” replied La Fontaine, who, when they had both quitted the house and reached a sufficiently retired spot, said with solemnity, “My friend, we must fight.” Poignant, more puzzled than ever, asked in what way he had offended. “Besides,” he added, “I am a soldier, and you scarcely know how to hold a sword.” “No matter,” replied La Fontaine; “the public wishes me to fight you.” Poignant, after protesting for a long time in vain, at length drew his sword from complaisance, and easily disarmed La Fontaine. Then he inquired the meaning of the whole affair. “The public declare,” said La Fontaine, “that you come every day to my house to see, not me, but my wife.” “My dear friend,” returned Poignant, “I should never have suspected you of such a misgiving, and I promise henceforth never to set foot across your threshold.” “On the contrary,” said La Fontaine, shaking the captain by the hand, “I have done what the public wanted, and I now wish you to continue your visits to my house with more regularity than ever.”

Paris Students—Their Character—In the Middle Ages—At the Revolution—Under the Directory—In 1814—In 1819—Lallemand—In the Revolution of 1830.

IF art and fashion, industry and commerce, are chiefly represented on the right bank of the Seine, science and the schools have their headquarters on the left. The “Latin country” or “pays Latin” occupies a considerable portion of the territory known as the Rive Gauche, and gives to it a distinctive character. Latin, since the Revolution, has been no more the language of instruction in France that it is now in other countries, though in Hungary and Austrian Poland it was the language of the law-courts even until the revolutionary year of 1848.

As we leave the Middle Ages we find that the Paris students, whilst losing a good deal of their original character, preserve all their turbulence and want of discipline. At the fair of Saint-Germains in 1609 they abandoned themselves to all kinds of debauchery, and fought in companies with pages, lackeys, and soldiers of the guard. One lackey cut off a student’s ears and put them in his pocket; after which the students pounced upon every footman or groom they came across, killing some and wounding others. The students of Louis XIII.’s reign are described as “more debauched than ever”; carrying arms, pillaging, killing, making love, and in order to support their excesses, robbing their relatives or even their professors.

The reputation of the Paris schools spread far and wide, and their civilising influence created institutions of learning in foreign lands. From the ranks of the Paris students in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stepped forth artists and writers who have remained the glory of France.

A great number of students were initiated into freemasonry and the other secret fraternities which preceded the Revolution. They saluted the era of political emancipation with enthusiasm. The first actor in the great drama, Camille Desmoulins, had sat on the benches of the École de Droit. Most of the orators or politicians of the great Assemblies were old students. In 1789 the students of law and medicine in the departments fraternised with those of Paris, so as to march hand-in-hand in the exploration of liberty and truth. Many scholars hastened to the menaced frontiers. On the 9th Thermidor a medical student named Soubervielle rallied around him the patriots of the schools, a large number of whom prepared, in insurrection, to fly to the assistance of those sacred principles which threatened to perish with the last of the Montaguards.

At political junctures the students of Paris have seldom failed to assert themselves. The opposition of the younger generation to the Restoration had its origin in the Polytechnic School, which in 1816 refused to conform to certain religious observances. Fifteen pupils were expelled on the 12th of April, and next day the school was dissolved by the king.

In 1819, when the cry of “Liberty” was resounding through more than one European country, the Paris schools responded to the agitation. The lectures delivered by Nicholas Bavoux, professor of criminal law, caused between the Liberal students and certain Royalist auditors discussions which, but for the intervention of the dean and of armed force, would have degenerated into sanguinary conflicts. Bavoux’s professorship was suspended and the school of law closed. Prosecuted in a criminal court, Bavoux was acquitted by the jury and found himself the hero of the hour. At Grenoble, on 8th May, 1820, the law students profited by the arrival of the Duke of Angoulême to make a public manifestation, in which they endeavoured to drown the cry of “Vive le roi!” with that of “Vive la charte!” Every day large groups of students stationed themselves outside the Palais-Bourbon to cheer the deputies of the Opposition, defenders of electoral liberty. Driven back from the Quai d’Orsay by the gendarmerie, they reassembled on the Place Louis XV., still shouting for the charter. Again forcibly displaced, they repaired in a mass to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where they fraternised with the working men. Thirty-five were arrested. On Saturday, the third of June, new gatherings took place at the approaches to the Chamber in which the deputies sat. A descent was made upon them by the police. The students, who wore as their sign of recognition a white cravat as well as a buckle in front of their hats, rescued those of their friends who were taken prisoners. On the Place du Carrousel they snatched from the hands of the body-guards by whom he had been seized one of their comrades named Lallemand. This young man, a law student of three-and-twenty, was at the selfsame instant struck by a bullet and killed. The death of Lallemand fanned the flame of rebellion. His corpse was transported to the Church of Bonne-Nouvelle, guarded by the scholars themselves. Next day it was borne to Père-Lachaise by the two schools of medicine and law. Within the cemetery accents of vengeance and of liberty could be heard. The friends of the victim determined to raise a monument to his honour, and the subscription-lists which for this purpose were instantly opened by the schools, not only of Paris but of the provinces, showed that enough money could have been procured to erect to Lallemand a statue nearly as big as the Colossus of Rhodes. These incidents produced a burning discussion in the Chamber, where the schools found at least one eloquent champion in the person of M. Demarcay. “These youths,” he said, “who, by their studies, their occupations, their emulation, would seem to belong to a ripe age of life, fill our schools and surrender themselves to the ardour of work and science. They have fire, you say, in their nature; they love liberty: and at what age would you wish men to love liberty and defend it with courage? Is it not the same fire and courage which you demand when you summon such youths to defend the country? Cease, then, to impute to them those disorders of which they have been the victim.” Foy and Benjamin Constant spoke in the same strain. But the Commission of Public Instruction passed a measure which excluded from the schools thirteen students of law and medicine; and one of these, Robert Lailavoix, suffered an imprisonment of two months. The indignation thus excited amongst the scholars of Paris found an echo in the provinces. Not long afterwards some six hundred students were secretly formed into a military corps styled the Free Company of the Schools. For two months they were instructed in the use of arms. The students, however, were Republican, whilst their leaders were Bonapartist; and the latter, seized at the last moment with a fit of discretion, refused to act. Otherwise the fiery youths who looked to them for guidance, and who had numerous sympathisers in the military, would have carried out their programme to the letter.

Constantly engaged in political agitation, the students of Paris bore a formidable part in the Revolution of 1830. On the 26th of July the famous Ordonnances were issued. The same day secret meetings were held by the students, at which they resolved to take up arms. In the evening, at the Chaumière ball, the quadrilles were stopped in virtue of the new decrees. A thrill of indignation ran through the assembly. The orchestra played the Marseillaise, and all present sang it in chorus. Hands were grasped, and vows uttered to conquer or die for liberty. The day afterwards intrepid students denounced the ordonnances in the public streets and called the citizens to arms. The pupils of the Polytechnic School passed the night in improvising implements of war, and with Vanneau, a bold spirit, at their head, scaled the walls and hurried to the barricades, where the students of the capital were mingled with the people. Already several had fallen dead. One student of medicine, named Papu, seeing his column, composed of youths and working men, disperse before a murderous musketry fire, sprang forward and cried—“I will show you how to die!” He was almost shattered to pieces, though he managed before expiring to gasp an exhortation to his comrades to continue the struggle. Rennes, his native town, honoured him with a monument. At the attack on the Hôtel de Ville another medical student, Labarbe, had both his legs broken, dying two days afterwards from the effects of the amputation, which he had undergone with a pipe in his mouth. Many a deed of heroism was done at this juncture by the Paris students, fighting like the populace for a Republic, which they did not obtain, and for which a disappointing compromise was furnished in the person of Louis Philippe.

The political history, however, of the Paris students is too formidable to trace in anything like detail. In modern times these once ardent youths have shown themselves comparatively indifferent to politics, and have sought diversion from their studies rather in the cigar than in the sword or musket.

The Chiffonnier, or Rag-picker—His Methods and Hour of Work—His Character—A Diogenes—The Chiffonnier de Paris.

The rag-picker does not exercise too nice a faculty of discrimination whilst filling his basket. The sifting is the business of the “tester,” a special functionary employed to classify the harvest. He evolves order from the chaos of disgusting rubbish which the opulent rag merchant will presently convert into odourless gold. The professional “testers” enjoy but a short career. The scents exhaled by the accumulated abominations which they handle are so many virulent poisons. It is said that even the lamps go out in the horrible dens where they toil.

The chiffonnier who scours the streets is always a miserable object; the master chiffonnier who buys the contents of his basket is often a millionaire, and splashes with his carriage wheels as he returns from the theatre those wretches who next day will go and sell to him what the city has thrown into the gutter.

No one would expect to find among the Paris chiffonniers a high moral standard; their work can scarcely have other than a degrading influence upon them. Their numbers are recruited as a rule from the most infamous regions of the capital, and from a social stratum only just above that of the vilest criminality. It has often been said that counts and marquises have sunk, by means of wine, cards, and so forth, into the ranks of the chiffonniers, even as a certain fraction of the English aristocracy are popularly supposed, after driving recklessly through life four-in hand, to end their career on the perch of a hansom cab. In London, it is true, such things have happened, and men of title have been known to adopt even less heroic methods of livelihood than that of driving a hackney vehicle for hire; they have—there is at least one contemporary instance—ground barrel-organs. But these are the very rarest exceptions; and in Paris, although it is not theoretically impossible for an aristocrat to find himself reduced to the basket and crook of the rag-picker, such a case would be an exception infinitely rarer still. So disgusting an occupation would be absolutely the last to which a ruined gentleman would resort.

The chiffonnier, however, despised as he is, figures a good deal in literature. A moving drama from the pen of M. Felix Pyat, and a vaudeville by MM. Frédéric de Courcy, Sauvage, and Bayard, have reproduced on the stage his manners and customs. One chiffonnier named Liard passed for a philosopher, and has been treated as such by more than one writer, and by at least one distinguished artist. He had descended from a higher station in life, and had suffered misfortunes. He would come out with Latin sentences on occasion. Scorning the wicker basket, he carried a simple wallet on his shoulder. Having collected his scraps from the gutter, he would pensively study them and draw philosophical reflections therefrom. The chiffonniers, too, sketched by Gavarni are not mindless tramps but profound reasoners.

Let us glance at the character of the Paris rag-picker as represented by a French writer of keen observation. “This chiffonnier,” he says “carries in him the stuff of a Diogenes. Like the latter he is content in his nomadic life, in his endless peregrinations, in his ragged independence. He regards with infinite contempt the slaves who are shut up from morning till night in a workshop, or behind a counter. Let others, mere living machines, measure out their time by the hands of the clock, he, the philosophical rag-picker, works when he likes, rests when he likes, without recollections of yesterday or thoughts of the morrow. If the north wind is icy, he warms himself with a few glasses of camphor, or a cup of petit noir; if the heat inconveniences him, he throws off part of his rags, lies down beneath the shadow of his basket, and goes to sleep. If he is hungry, he hastens to earn a sou or two, and then feasts like a Lucullus on bread and Italian cheese. If he is ill, that matters nothing to him. ‘The hospital,’ he says, ‘was not built for dogs.’ Diogenes threw away his basin; the chiffonnier has no less a disdain for the goods of this world. It was a drunken chiffonnier, uncoifed by his own lurchings, who addressed to his battered felt hat, lying on the ground, this apostrophe full of logic: ‘If I pick you up, I fall; if I fall, you will not help me up again. I shall leave you!’ Subjected to all kinds of privations, the chiffonnier is proud because he feels himself free. He treats with haughtiness even the rag merchant to whom he brings the sheaves which he has gathered, and from whom he occasionally receives slight advances. ‘If you don’t want to buy of me, well and good; I shall go elsewhere,’ he says, making a gesture as if to depart. Through the multitudinous holes in his coat his pride is visible. He will say to the great of the earth: ‘Get out of my daylight.’”