HOW many inquisitive people there are in the world! I am sure my reader wants to know why the journey round my room has lasted forty-two days rather than forty-three, or any other number. But how am I to tell him what I do not know myself? All I can say is, that if the work is too long for him, it is not my fault that it was not shorter. I dismiss all the pride a traveller may fairly indulge in, and candidly declare I should have been well contented, for my part, with a single chapter. It is quite true that I made myself as comfortable as possible in my room; but still, alas, I was not my own master in the matter of leaving it. Nay, more, I even think that had it not been for the intervention of certain powerful persons who interested themselves in me, and towards whom I entertain a lively sense of gratitude, I should have had ample time for producing a folio volume; so prejudiced in my favor were the guardians who made me travel round my room.

And yet, intelligent reader, see how wrong these men were; and understand clearly, if you can, the argument I am about to put before you.

Can there be anything more natural or more just than to draw your sword upon a man who happens to tread on your toe, who lets slip a bitter word during a moment’s vexation caused by your own thoughtlessness, or who has had the misfortune to gain favor in the sight of your lady-love?

Under such or like circumstances, you betake yourself to a meadow, and there, like Nicole and the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” you try to give the fourth cut while your adversary parries tierce; and, that vengeance may be fully satisfied, you present your naked breast to him, thus running the risk of being killed by your enemy, in order to be avenged.

It is evident that such a custom is most reasonable. And yet, we sometimes meet with people who disapprove of so praiseworthy a course. But what is about of a piece with the rest of the business is, that the very persons who condemn the course we have described, and who would have it regarded as a grave error, would judge still more harshly any one who refused to commit it. More than one unlucky wight has, by endeavoring to conform to their opinion, lost his reputation and his livelihood. So that, when people are so unfortunate as to have an affair of honor to settle, it would not be a bad plan to cast lots to see whether it shall be arranged according to law, or according to fashion. And as law and fashion are at variance, the judges might decide upon their sentence by the aid of dice,—and probably it is to some such decision as this that we should have to refer in order to explain how it came about that my journey lasted just two and forty days.