duellist risks his life, there
he does not even risk his shirt. Here he fights with pistol or
sabre, in France with a hairpin--a blunt one. Here the desperately
wounded man tries to walk to the hospital; there they paint the
scratch so that they can find it again, lay the sufferer on a
stretcher, and conduct him off the field with a band of music.

At the end of a French duel the pair hug and kiss and cry, and
praise each other's valor; then the surgeons make an examination
and pick out the scratched one, and the other one helps him on to
the litter and pays his fare; and in return the scratched one
treats to champagne and oysters in the evening, and then "the
incident is closed," as the French say. It is all polite, and
gracious, and pretty, and impressive. At the end of an Austrian
duel the antagonist that is alive gravely offers his hand to the
other man, utters some phrases of courteous regret, then bids him
good-by and goes his way, and that incident also is closed. The
French duellist is painstakingly protected from danger, by the
rules of the game. His antagonist's weapon cannot reach so far as
his body; if he get a scratch it will not be above his elbow. But
in Austria the rules of the game do not provide against danger,
they carefully provide _for_ it, usually. Commonly the combat must
be kept up until one of the men is disabled; a non-disabling slash
or stab does not retire him.

For a matter of three months I watched the Viennese journals, and
whenever a duel was reported in their telegraphic columns I
scrap-booked it. By this record I find that duelling in Austria is
not confined to journalists and old maids, as in France, but is
indulged in by military men, journalists, students, physicians,
lawyers, members of the legislature, and even the Cabinet, the
Bench and the police. Duelling is forbidden by law; and so it seems
odd to see the makers and administrators of the laws dancing on
their work in this way. Some months ago Count Bodeni, at that time
Chief of the Government, fought a pistol-duel here in the capital
city of the Empire with representative Wolf, and both of those
distinguished Christians came near getting turned out of the
Church--for the Church as well as the State forbids duelling.

In one case, lately, in Hungary