e assistance of a comrade; and out of my regiment I
had not a single friend in Paris. In my difficulty I thought of you.
Our brief acquaintance scarcely warrants my request; but the kindness
you have already shown me encourages the hope that you will not refuse
me this service. M. de Berg is a man of strict honour, and you may
depend on your name and share in the affair remaining undivulged. Even
were they known, you, as a foreigner and civilian, would in no way be
compromised by the relative position of my opponent and myself, which
renders me liable, should the affair get wind, to a court-martial and
severe punishment."

Although opposed to duelling, except under circumstances of
extraordinary aggravation, I had been more than once unavoidably mixed
up in affairs of the kind; and the apprehension of unpleasant results
from accession to Oakley's request did not for an instant weigh with
me. I was greatly struck by the chivalrous conduct of M. de Berg, and
felt strong sympathy with Oakley, in the painful and most peculiar
position into which his early follies and unfortunate attachment had
brought him. Very brief deliberation was necessary to decide me to act
as his second. There was no time to lose, and I begged him to put me
at once in possession of the details of the affair, and to tell me
where I could find De Berg's second. I was not sorry to learn that it
was unnecessary for me to see him, and that all preliminaries were in
fact arranged. The duel not being one of those that the intervention
of friends may prevent, and Oakley having already fixed time and place
with his antagonist, my functions became limited to attending him on
the ground. It grew late, and Oakley left me for the night. In order
to preserve my incognito in the business--for I had no desire to
figure in newspaper paragraphs, or to be arraigned before a criminal
tribunal, even with certainty of acquittal--we agreed to meet at eight
o'clock the next morning, at a certain coffee-house, a considerable
distance from my lodgings, whence a cabriolet would convey us to the
place of rendezvous.

It was a fresh and beautiful spring morning, when Oakley and myself
descended from our hack vehicle, near the little village of St Mande,
and struck into the Bois de Vincennes. There had been rain during the
night, and the leaves and grass were heavy with water drops. The sky
was bright blue, and the sun shone brilliantly; but over the ground
and between the tree