"He put his hand on his breast, his body began to bend slowly forward, then collapsed in death and sank to the ground." It is pathetic.

There are other duels in my list, but I find in each and all of them one and the same ever-recurring defect--the _principals_ are never present, but only their sham representatives.

The _real_ principals in any duel are not the duellists themselves, but their families.

They do the mourning, the suffering, theirs is the loss and theirs the misery.

They stake all that, the duellist stakes nothing but his life, and that is a trivial thing compared with what his death must cost those whom he leaves behind him.