Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...for such purposes than a long one) left him there for dead, though he survived an hour or two, saying some confidant had betrayed him. This little affair despatched, the Baron succeeded in getting off the premises so adroitly that no one had a notion or more than a conjecture who the murderer was. So quietly was the whole affair managed that it was never brought home to him; and he never even avowed it in so many words to his intimate friend--our author! Such was the end of M. Du Gua, a brave and THE DUEL "AT HOME" 119 generous gentleman, the chronicle of whose deeds is written in our little Book of Colonels in France from the first institution of that office.1 Such was his end, killed in the middle of his company of guards, among all his own officers and soldiers, and hardly fifty paces out of sight of a monarch who was particularly devoted to him--without any one knowing anything of it--a thing which was indeed a nine days' wonder at Court. " In conclusion," the Baron in question did deserve his reputation as the most remorseless of sleuth-hounds in the matter of private vengeance. Whether (in addition to the above ghastly tale) he was also responsible for the murder of the young Montraveau, brother of M. Clermont d'Amboise, it was really difficult to say in the absence of better evidence; especially as it happened somewhere in the woods or warrens of Nantouillet, and the two families (presumably of Nantouillet and Montraveau) had not been on very good terms for some time past. On such a matter there was no certainty, but Brantome knew for a fact that there were two other men he meant to kill, who may have heard, without regret, of his decease. Some of his enemies (possibly these two among them) never did approve his particular " way of...
