deep hatred mounted to his face, as the
blood would to the face of any other. "If a man had by unheard-of
and excruciating tortures destroyed your father, your mother, your
betrothed,--a being who, when torn from you, left a desolation, a wound
that never closes, in your breast,--do you think the reparation that
society gives you is sufficient when it interposes the knife of the
guillotine between the base of the occiput and the trapezal muscles of
the murderer, and allows him who has caused us years of moral sufferings
to escape with a few moments of physical pain?"

"Yes, I know," said Franz, "that human justice is insufficient to
console us; she can give blood in return for blood, that is all; but you
must demand from her only what it is in her power to grant."

"I will put another case to you," continued the count; "that where
society, attacked by the death of a person, avenges death by death. But
are there not a thousand tortures by which a man may be made to suffer
without society taking the least cognizance of them, or offering him
even the insufficient means of vengeance, of which we have just spoken?
Are there not crimes for which the impalement of the Turks, the augers
of the Persians, the stake and the brand of the Iroquois Indians, are
inadequate tortures, and which are unpunished by society? Answer me, do
not these crimes exist?"

"Yes," answered Franz; "and it is to punish them that duelling is
tolerated."

"Ah, duelling," cried the count; "a pleasant manner, upon my soul, of
arriving at your end when that end is vengeance! A man has carried off
your mistress, a man has seduced your wife, a man has dishonored your
daughter; he has rendered the whole life of one who had the right to
expect from heaven that portion of happiness God his promised to every
one of his creatures, an existence of misery and infamy; and you think
you are avenged because you send a ball through the head, or pass a
sword through the breast, of that man who has planted madness in your
brain, and despair in your heart. And remember, moreover, that it is
often he who comes off victorious from the strife, absolved of all crime
in the eyes of the world. No, no," continued the count, "had I to avenge
myself, it is not thus I would take revenge."

"Then you disapprove of duelling? You would not fight a duel?" asked
Albert in his turn, astonished at this strange theory.

"Oh, yes," replied the count; "understand me, I would fight a du