Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/169

B——, though he had only one leg, was a good swordsman, and contrived to kill a man at Lyons who had jeered him about the loss of his limb at Waterloo. My old and esteemed friend, Mike Fitzgerald, son of Lord Edward and the celebrated Pamela, was always ready to measure swords with the Frenchmen; and, after a brawl at Silves', the then fashionable Bonapartist café at the corner of the Rue Lafitte and the Boulevard, in which two of our Scotch countrymen showed the white feather, he and another officer placed their own cards over the chimney-piece in the principal room of the cafe, offering to fight any men, or number of men, for the frequent public insults offered to Britons. This challenge, however, was never answered.

A curious duel took place at Beauvais during the occupation of France by our army. A Captain B——, of one of our cavalry regiments quartered in that town, was insulted by a French officer. B—— demanded satisfaction, which was accepted; but the Frenchman would not fight with pistols. B—— would not fight with swords; so at last it was agreed that they should fight on horseback, with lances. The duel took place in