Honor... Ouch!
The nineteenth century killed an impressive number of men of genius in pistol duels. How many trivial men were struck dead? That has not been recorded.
The senselessness of this bloody ritual is evident to our eyes today, and I will not go into the fascinating terrain of the anthropological and historical roots of dueling in the Western world as well as in the East, complete with the complex "methodi pugnandi" in this musing. I want to reflect on three instances of this deadly tradition – a male tradition; needless to say, women are not as stupid.
Each time we hear of an untimely death, whether due to illness or accident, let alone war, we feel anguish for the waste of life because of the victims' missed opportunities and dreams so harshly interrupted. But when it comes to death by duel, the participants "chose" to risk their lives, a choice dictated by pride (or "vain-glory," the futile display of one's high self-worth) and stupidity. Death could have been avoided but was not averted due to the bloody ritualization of a questionable sense of honor that puts both the banal and primitive -albeit codified- male desire to maul one's adversary, the object of hatred, into action. Or to defend oneself from that hatred.
Manzoni makes this into an illuminating metaphor in a flashback to chapter IV of his novel The Betrothed. Ludovico, the son of a wealthy merchant, "went one day on a street in his city" together with two bodyguards (the so called "bravoes," in Lombardy under the Spanish Empire during the XVIIth century) and a servant of the house (Cristoforo, the father of eight children). He meets a nobleman, "an arrogant man and a professional bully, to whom he had never spoken in his life, but who nourished a cordial hatred for him, which he returned no less heartily. For one of the privileges this world offers us is the right to hate and be hated by those whom we have never met." This man proceeds in the opposite direction, followed by four bodyguards; both walk, skirting a wall, and since the wall is on Lodovico's right, he should have the right of way, and the other man should let him by (“Look where the Law is sneaking about!” quips Manzoni). However, the nobleman demands the right of way by boasting his "right" as an aristocrat. So, the unequal, violent, and idiotic duel begins between the two young men and their "bravoes." Lodovico is wounded, and when his opponent swoops down on him with his sword, Cristoforo protects him and gets stabbed instead by the arrogant rival. Lodovico kills the nobleman in turn. At this point, the bravoes belonging to both men flee, while Lodovico remains wounded in the street beside the corpses of Cristoforo and the arrogant aristocratic bully. All Italians know that to atone for that stupid murderous event, Ludovico later becomes a humble Friar, helping the poor, and takes on the name of the man who lost his life to save him, Cristoforo.
It is a splendid literary metaphor for the stupidity and wickedness of dueling. As for repentance and atonement, that's a choice that Manzoni sets out. I have the impression that most assassins in duels tend not to repent.
As I said, I would like to tell the story of three illustrious (and very different) duelists of the nineteenth century.
I'll start with Alexander Hamilton. His is the face on the 10-dollar bill. He's a memorable and celebrated character; in 2016, a musical about his life won the Pulitzer Prize and received 16 nominations at the Tony Awards.
Hamilton was born in the Caribbean in 1755. A 20-year-old student, he espoused the revolutionary cause, enlisted, and valiantly fought alongside George Washington. In his thirties, he was one of the principal architects of the birth of the American Republic and among the most brilliant authors of the Constitution. He founded and led the Federalist Party against Jefferson's Republican Party; the fundamental principles of modern federalism are Hamilton's.
With a slim build and beautiful eyes somewhere between blue and purple in color, Hamilton was a brave, determined politician. Washington appointed him the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, a role he played brilliantly, restoring public finances and international credit. Convinced that only a public bank could finance development for the sole purpose of the common good, Hamilton created the Federal Bank. At 25, he married for love despite some opposition from her family. Beautiful, intelligent, and wealthy, Elizabeth Schuyler was a brunette with black eyes and a sweet, lively, yet determined character. Elizabeth always stood beside her husband, "advising him and putting his affairs in order." She oversaw all of his writing, dealt with the publisher of the Federalist Papers, and stood beside him, advising him throughout his political career. They had eight children. Their relationship went into crisis when Hamilton had an adulterous affair. To avoid attacks and speculation, Hamilton admitted to it publicly. Elizabeth, pregnant with their sixth child, moved away but returned to him after a few months, and they never separated again. Their firstborn son was named Philip. Both father and mother adored him as they did his second-born sister Angelica. Young Philip, a law student, was 19 years old when he challenged a 27-year-old lawyer, George Eacker, who had politically insulted his father in a public speech and then insulted Philip when asked for an explanation. The duel, forbidden in the state of New York, took place in New Jersey, on the cliffs of Weehawken on the banks of the Hudson, on Sunday, November 22, 1801, at noon. Philip was shot and died a slow, painful death. His parents (his mother was pregnant with her eighth and last child) were devastated; his sister Angelica, 17, had such a violent nervous breakdown that it triggered a mental illness that lasted the rest of her life. It was a tragic lesson for Hamilton, of course, but it was not enough to prevent him from facing, only three years later, a duel himself and, as it so happens, with a lawyer as well. But not just any lawyer -- the Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr, one of the most controversial figures in the history of the country. In 2008, The Times called Burr "the worst American vice-president of all time". Burr challenged Hamilton, blaming him for animosity, public attacks, and Hamilton's defeat as New York State Governor. Burr had much more progressive ideas than Hamilton in many fields, such as the public role of women. But that was not why they dueled. Burr was an ambitious conspirator and a bon-vivant, capable of ferocity as well as humanity. He believed politics, whether right or wrong, was not at the service of citizens as Hamilton thought but was for "fun, honor, and gains." The duel between Burr and Hamilton took place on Wednesday, July 11, 1804, in the same place where Hamilton's son had dueled and died. There are conflicting reports of what happened during the duel. Both took shots, but it is not certain whether Hamilton fired on purpose or accidentally pulled the trigger, firing into the air after being shot. Hamilton died. He was 49 years old. Before the duel, he wrote his wife: "Adieu, best of wives and best of women. Embrace all my darling children for me."
Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton's assassin, was a character of sinister charm, a corrupt, cursed, ambitious pleasure-seeker. In 1973, Gore Vidal wrote a splendid historical novel about him, Burr. With his iconoclastic irony, Vidal attacks and demolishes the "American myth," calls George Washington incompetent and Thomas Jefferson hypocritical, partially defends the controversial figure of Burr, and paints a political world imbued with corruption, lies, follies, and plots. But that is another story.
In the shadow, or perhaps I should say "at the heart," of this duel (of the double duel) was a woman who, as a result of the infamous "affairs of honor" between men, lost her firstborn son and her husband and saw her daughter go mad. Elizabeth survived her husband for another half-century. Until her death at age 97, she fought to preserve and defend Alexander's thoughts and writing. She founded New York's first orphanage. She wore, tied around her neck, a small envelope from which she never parted. It contained a poem her husband had written for her while courting her.
***
We come to the second duelist. In Europe. France. In the June 7th, 1832 edition of Gazette des Tribunaux, we read: "The young 21-year-old Évariste Galois, a good mathematician, best known for his ardent imagination, died on the 31st of May 1832 at the Cochin Hospital in the 13th Arrondissement of Paris, after 12 hours of agony following acute peritonitis caused by a bullet fired from 25 paces."
Initially, Évariste Galois had a penchant for classical studies, but while attending the famous Parisian lycée Louis-le-Grand, he was struck by the texts on the "theory of analytical functions" by the great Turin mathematician Giuseppe Lagrangia (the French had taken possession of it transforming it into "Lagrange") like a bolt of lightning.
The young Évariste, as one of his biographers, recounts, "... Once immersed in mathematics, he was pulled in with a dizzying speed by the insane desire to keep going further, provoking and prodding his classmates and teachers in an original and bizarre way; he was original and rebellious in behavior, but had no malice. He was very sweet indeed with a truly innocent spirit."
Évariste abandoned all his other studies, so absorbed was he in mathematics (his biographer writes Mathématiques, plural and with a capital M). He had just one thing on his mind: to gain entrance to the École Polytechnique. His mathematics teachers said: "This student has a marked superiority over his fellow students (...) and works only at the higher levels of Mathematics." At 17, Évariste made discoveries of great importance in the theories of equations. But being admitted to the École Polytechnique was no easy feat, and he was rejected because, as was later written, often "A candidate of a higher intelligence is passed over by an examiner of lower intelligence." Évariste was accepted at the École Normale, where he studied and cultivated his libertarian and republican spirit in the tense and reactionary political atmosphere of Charles X's government. He joined the persecuted Sociétè des amis du peuple and, in the name of his republican ideas, clashed with the coarse director of the École Normale, who kicked him out of the school. His cowardly classmates did not defend him. His anger and the injustice hurt Galois but did not stop him. At the Caillot bookstore at No. 5 rue Sorbonne, he immediately began to teach a course to the public on "new theories" in higher algebra, including the "theory of equations solvable through radicals" and "elliptical functions treated by pure algebra." Not until the 20th century did people realize that Évariste Galois had laid the foundations of a new theory of bodies at the highest degree of modern mathematical abstraction. Meanwhile, he himself said, "My heart revolted against my brain." He indulged in his passion for politics, dedicating body and soul to the dream of a new world, just and free without kings or dictators. Considered dangerous, he was arrested and tried. During the trial, he gave a passionate argument in self-defense. The jury acquitted him. He was not even free for a month before being arrested again in precaution during a republican demonstration, and he found himself back in prison.
The young mathematician frightened those in power. They made him rot in prison for months. Évariste wrote: "I hate, that's all. Those who do not feel hate deeply, this hatred of the present, cannot really know love for the future."
In prison, he went back to work, working with his brain while walking, as was his habit, several hours at a time; he meditated, walking around the courtyard in circles, and elaborated the study on "elliptic functions." The famous revolutionary scientist François Vincent Raspail was in the same prison (he would encounter many prisons during his courageous political career). Raspail took a liking to Évariste, giving him the Goldonian nickname of Zanetto, the Venetian twin, somewhat of a doofus who is murdered in the black comedy, describing the young man as so: "Our poor Zanetto has, in his frail body, so much courage that he would give his life for the hundredth part of the tiniest good deed (...) Grace for this child, so small and so reckless, whose forehead is already engraved with deep wrinkles from study and, in the space of only a few years, the knowledge of an entire life spent in the most intense meditation! In the name of science and merit, let him live! In three years, Zanetto will be the great Évariste Galois!"
A bitter prophecy of premature death (Zanetto) and an ambiguous prophecy about the fate of our hero (he lived only three more years, but, yes, he indeed became the great Galois).
Raspail reported a touching dialogue he shared with Évariste, "My friend..." the young mathematician told him, "... I carry two men in me, and, unfortunately, I can guess who will get the better of the other. I am too eager to reach the goal (...) the passions of my age are all imbued with impatience (...) you know what I miss? Someone to love and love only with my heart. I lost my father, and no one has ever replaced him."
Évariste was released "on parole" to obtain care in a clinic in rue de Lurcine. Here, he met "someone to love." He naively fell in love with a girl who was not as naïve as he, "an infamous coquette" he would call her later on the eve of the duel she caused. The real reasons for the challenge and subsequent duel remain obscure.
In a letter to his friends, Évariste apologized for not giving his life for "...the public good and my country..." And in despair, he wondered, "Why die for such a despicable reason, compelled by a challenge that, I swear, I tried to avoid in every way!" Myopic and clumsy, he was sure he could not come out of the pistol duel alive. He concluded the letter, "I forgive those who killed me. They act in good faith."
The duel occurred early morning on May 30, 1832, at the pond de la Glacière. The name of who killed him is uncertain. There were two others, perhaps the girl's boyfriend and her uncle (a certain Stéphanie D.), people Évariste respected. The autopsy recounted the state of Galois' brain almost as if evoking geography ("... heavy, with wide circumvolutions, deep ravines, high ground in front of each front lobe...") and followed the bullet's path: "... it entered one inch inward from the anterior superior spine of the right iliac bone, passed through the abdominal viscera, pierced the psoas and ileus muscles and the iliac bone itself, and finished protruding under the skin between the median and great gluteal muscles.... in its path, it lacerated the ascending branches of the anterior iliac artery, bridged the middle part of the intestines, demolished the descending colon by tearing it as it passed through it, and passed through the left iliac bone which it burst..." etc.) Such is the description of a bullet fired for a foolish reason into the body of a young man.
Évariste died the next day at 10 a.m. It is reported that at the height of his faculties, the scientist Galois refused the care of the priest. His young brother Alfred (17) was next to him in his agony and cried. Évarsite told him: "Don't cry! I need all my courage to die at twenty years old!" The night before, he wrote his epitaph in Latin in a letter: "Nitens lux, horrenda procella, tenebris aeternis involuta." (Luminous splendor, in the terror of the storm, forever wrapped in darkness). The perfect synthesis of his destiny and his work.
Three thousand people, republicans, including the leadership of the Society of the Friends of the People, followed Galois' coffin under close police surveillance. Many had been arrested beforehand for fear of unrest. Évariste was buried in the mass grave at Montparnasse cemetery.
In the story of this duel, there is a powerful metaphor about the fate of thinkers (he was more than a thinker; in mathematics, he was an absolute genius). The metaphor concerns the night before the duel. After writing the letters to his friends, Évariste Galois spent the whole night awake, not out of the anxiety for what awaited him. No, he worked, he wrote! He feverishly filled pages and pages in notebooks with the results of the mathematical research he cared most about. He implored his friend to submit the writings to the two great German mathematicians Jacobi and Gauss so that they would give their opinion not on the truth of the theorems but on their importance. On a frantic spring night, he wrote his scientific testament with frenzy, scribbling countless times in the margins, "I don't have time, I don't have time!"
Many of us live in a constant state of 'the night before a duel with a known outcome.' We are overwhelmed by the immense amount of study and knowledge to tackle; we are suffocated by the mass of ideas and narratives we would like to produce, but ... "We don't have time! We don't have time!"
*
Here is the third character in these musings on the senseless and foolish ritual. The victim here is impressive: Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, the greatest of all Russian poets. On the 27th of January 1837, at five in the afternoon in a snow-laden pine forest, a bullet pierced his groin. He was just shy of 38 years old.
Today, this definition from Russia resonates particularly strongly (it is by Aleksandr Blok and can be found on Wikipedia): "Our memory safeguards a cheerful name ever since we were children: Pushkin. This name, this sound, filled many days of our life. A name appears next to the dark names of emperors, leaders, inventors of weapons that kill, torturers, and martyrs: Pushkin. He knew how to carry his burden with joy and kindness, even though his role as a poet was neither easy nor cheerful, but tragic."
For the "unhappy people who do not know Russian," as George Steiner defines the majority of us, we are sentenced to be "forever excluded from true access to Pushkin's genius, which is inextricably interwoven with the magic of sound, cadence, and connotation in Russian and thus untranslatable. Pushkin's metamorphic mastery of his native tongue so profoundly exploited its genius as to make of translation helplessness."
Yet, one must read Pushkin. The "unhappy" like me are forced to intuit a mysterious maze of sounds that make the words, emotion, and thought behind the translation of his verse and prose. Pushkin possesses a magical gift belonging to very few poets and writers of being able, through words, to convey the most profound emotions and feelings that only music can communicate.
The story of the duel that killed Pushkin -masterfully told by Serena Vitale in the novel/essay Il bottone di Pushkin (Adelphi)- is a ballet where the sublime and trivial mingle. In Pushkin, life and art chased after each other; they mixed and struggled to reconcile. His Mozartian lightness and heavy, aggressive violence alternate just as his playfulness and sense of fun mingled with anger and disgust.
Pushkin was a small, dark man. He was born into an aristocratic family with unique roots. His maternal great-grandfather, Abram Petrovic Hannibal, a military engineer and general-in-chief of the Emperor's Russian Army, was African (there is debate whether he came from Ethiopia or Cameroon). Kidnapped and enslaved as a child by the Ottomans, he was sold to the Russian Imperial court. Peter the Great had understood his talent, freed him, adopted him as a nephew, and educated him. The African became a brilliant and prominent figure in the court of Peter the Great and later in that of his daughter, the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. He lived until the age of 85 and had 11 children. When Pushkin died, he was writing his great-grandfather's biography: "The Moor of Peter the Great." So, the greatest Russian poet, the founder of the contemporary Russian literary language, the poet who could turn language into music, and one of the greatest romantics had African roots.
In midlife, Pushkin experienced censorship, exile to the remote lands of the Empire, and then, finally, great fame. He successfully wooed many women, some of them married, and then he got married himself at 32, in love with "the most beautiful woman in Russia, nineteen-year-old Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova, who came from a dysfunctional aristocratic family in ruin. In their six years of marriage, they had four children. As a couple, they were admired and sought after. Pushkin was at the height of his fame, but his correspondence was still intercepted, as always, by the Tsar's secret police. Nicholas I loved to invite the poet and his wife to court. Natalya enjoyed the parties. Alexander detested them. The Tsar could not help himself from courting Natalia.
Pushkin had already written a significant number of poems, short stories, novels, fairy tales, dramas, and essays. He was rightfully famous but also in the midst of an existential crisis. He tried to come to terms with a sense of emptiness, his mistakes, his dissatisfaction, but most of all, his sense of intolerance with the society he inhabited and despised. He could not find satisfaction in his life or his work.
In the inactivity of the night live burn in me
Snakes of heart remorse;
Dreams boil; in a mind overwhelmed by longing,
An excess of heavy thoughts crowds;
The memory is silent before me
Its long progress scroll;
And reading with disgust my life,
I tremble and curse
And I bitterly complain, and bitterly shed tears,
But I do not wash off the sad lines.
In his "disgust," Pushkin seemed to have enjoyed challenging himself and the world around him, showing off his dissatisfaction and anger. He displayed it in front of the St. Petersburg society he hated so much. But most of all, he staged it in front of his wife. Or perhaps he enacted it with his wife and himself, searching for analogies with his novel in verse he recently finished, which brought him great fame, Eugene Onegin, an absolute masterpiece that ends in a fatal duel. Pushkin chose pistols for his Russian roulette; the second pistol went into the hand of a Frenchman, a handsome soldier who had fallen in love with Natalia, "the most beautiful woman in Russia." She loved her husband: she loved him and admired him so much that she spoke using his expressions and words. Yet, she could not remain immune to the Frenchman's courtship. It's curious: often, beautiful women are the most insecure; they need to seduce others. Two great women poets of the 20th century, Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva) detested Natalia, accusing her of being frivolous, superficial, and so desirous of luxury and jewelry that Pushkin needed to write to earn money rather than write for pleasure. They hated her because she was the cause of Pushkin's untimely death, which deprived Russia and the whole world of everything that he had not yet written.
Of course, Natalya was imperfect, but so was her husband in his unreachable greatness. Natalya Nikolayevna Gončarova was 25 years old; she had been married to Pushkin for six years when the handsome Frenchman started courting her. She told Pushkin of the torment she felt for "the other man" but at the same time declared her absolute love for him.
The Frenchman has a questionable biography. His name was Georges-Charles d'Anthès. At the time of these events, he was 25, the same age as Natalya. The descendant of a run-down, reactionary aristocratic Alsatian family, Georges-Charles attended the prestigious military academy of Saint-Cyr but ended up in Prussia after the expulsion of Charles III, whom he and his family had supported. Here, two years before the fateful duel, fate mockingly threw its dice. The handsome officer ended up gravely ill and penniless in an inn in a small German town. At this inn, the Dutch ambassador to Russia, Baron Jacob Derk van Heeckeren van Beverweerd, a wealthy, cultured man of 43 years, a collector of antiquities, and a refined homosexual, had no choice but to stop because his carriage had broken down. At dinner, he learned that a twenty-three-year-old Frenchman had been taken ill and was alone in the inn. The Baron was accompanied to the young man's room and was dazzled by his beauty. The Baron took care of Georges-Charles, waited for him to recover, and offered to accompany him to St. Petersburg. In the Empire's capital, the noble Dutch ambassador hired the best teachers to educate Georges-Charles and enlisted him in the Empress' Royal Guards as a Cornette, the lowest rank of cavalry officers who carry the company standard called a Cornette. The women of the court fell at the beautiful cornette's feet. He was brilliant and made quick progress. Sources testified that the relationship between d'Anthès and Heeckeren was characterized by rare mutual care and tenderness. The Dutch Baron wrote to d'Anthès' father, asking him for permission to adopt his son and make him his heir. The old man d'Anthès willingly renounced his rights to his son. The King of Holland authorized the French officer to become Georges-Charles van Heeckeren d'Anthès. A new family was born. Prince Trubetskoy, a friend of Georges-Charles, said: "... whether he took Heeckeren or Heeckeren took him... Judging by everything in the relationship with Heeckeren, Georges was the passive partner."
Meanwhile, the young man fell in love with the wife of a legend and started wooing her. Natalia flirted and danced with him. Pushkin watched, detached but jealous. Angry but all the while trusting his wife, he observed her and her suitor just like an entomologist observes two butterflies fluttering around each other in a mating dance. Natalia's sister, Ekaterina, was three years older than her, less beautiful and less brilliant than her, but very sensitive. She lived in Pushkin's house and admired her brother-in-law. Unmarried, Ekaterina fell in love with d'Anthès. Natalia was very much in favor of her sister marrying the handsome officer. The young man's new father, the Baron Dutch Ambassador, also encouraged the marriage.
D'Anthès was all Pushkin wished to be himself: young, beautiful, and desired. And everything he did not want to be: vulgar, empty, and mundane, not a book to his name, only beautiful clothes, and a willingness to do anything for money. Pushkin would tease and taunt him. The Frenchman tried to escape Pushkin's provocations but could not avoid the attraction he felt for the poet's wife. Pushkin watched the handsome officer's game of doubles, courting both his wife and his wife's sister. Finally, with the active intervention of Baron van Heeckeren, the marriage took place. Pushkin did not attend; he was convinced Ekaterina was just George-Charles' beard and that the Frenchman was marrying her only to be near Natalya without arousing suspicion. And Natalya? What did she think? What was his wife "really" feeling? Only seventeen days after the wedding took place, an anonymous message for Pushkin arrived with the address: "To the Deputy Grand Master and Historian of the Order of Cuckolds."
Pushkin was convinced the Dutch Baron wrote it. He confronted him, insulting him. The Baron denied it vehemently. One provocation led to another, culminating in throwing down the gauntlet: a duel: Pushkin challenged his brother-in-law. The women despaired, trying to prevent the duel, but it was in vain.
And so, they ended up in that forest at the end of the day. Pushkin had become one of his characters. The seconds paced the distance in snow up to their thighs. They beat down the snow with their boots to dig a path and stretched their black coats to mark the barriers. In the meanwhile, Pushkin sucked on myrtle berries. Distracted, bored. He sucked on them and spat them out towards d'Anthès, who was watching him from a distance, pale, standing still in his double-breasted green cloth jacket. Finally, they walked their paces, turned, and shot. With the Frenchman's first shot, Pushkin flew into the snow; he was hit in the thigh. The witnesses were about to rush to him, but he stopped them: "No! I can shoot just fine!" He got up, resting on an elbow. Everyone went back to their place. But they had to give him another gun since his barrel was packed with ice. Pushkin shot two shots. This time, the Frenchman flew into the snow, shot in the arm and heart. Pushkin rejoiced, adding, "Now that I've killed him, I'm sorry." D'Anthès was not dead, though, because he then fired a second shot that hit Pushkin in the groin.
A button on the Frenchman's jacket had saved the man's heart.
Forty-eight hours of agony followed for Pushkin, where the poet consoled his wife, embraced his four young children, and spoke directly with death: "Tell me, will it soon end? I am getting bored... Do I still have to suffer so long?... Sooner, sooner, please... Here it comes... Life is finished."
Turgenev said: "His wife still doesn't believe he's dead: she still doesn't believe it. Meanwhile, the silence has already been broken. We speak aloud - and this noise is terrible to the ears as it speaks of the death of the man in front of whom we all kept silent..."
Here, too, the autopsy recounts the bullet's path: "... All intestines were found to be heavily reddened; only in one point as large as a kopek in the small intestine was infected with gangrene. This is probably where the bullet hit him... According to the direction of the bullet, we must conclude that the assassinated man was standing to his side, at a three-quarters stance, and the direction of the shot was from above downwards..."
The Russian people were overcome with great sorrow for the premature death of its immense poet and writer; yes, the Russian people adore their poets. His enemies and detractors rejoiced. For fear of unrest, the funeral was carried out almost in secrecy, and the poet's body was taken to the family tomb in the dead of night. Natalya was in despair. Seven years later, she remarried General Pyotr Petrovich Lanskoy and had three other daughters. She died at the age of 51.
The fate of the man who killed Pushkin was different. Tried and pardoned, d'Anthès was escorted along with his wife to the border. They returned to France, where they had three daughters. Ekaterina Goncharova died giving birth to her fourth child, a son. Georges-Charles had a brilliant political career in his country; he was appointed officer of the Légion d'honneur, then became a senator and one of the most reactionary and zealous members of the anti-republican right. He died at the age of 83.
To forget this detestable, mediocre man who made his fortune selling his body and killing a genius, I invite you to read Tatjana's dream in Onegin, chapter five.
Tatanya ("profoundly Russian in her being, herself not knowing how or why/in Russian winters thrilled at seeing the cold perfection of the sky) wanders on a tundra of endless snow, shrouded in fog, and stops, full of uncertainty, on a small dangerous swinging bridge over a torrent not yet frozen over, its water stirring in turmoil resounding down by the bottom of the abyss in a swirling darkness of foam. A bear appears and offers its paw to help her cross. She escapes. It chases her, catches her, and takes her to a party of beasts.
This woman swinging over the void in the fog surrounded by a world of ice and dragged away by a beast to a place full of monsters while crying: "Mine! Mine!" is Natalya; this woman, a melancholy dreamer, is many women.
*
Out of fairness, I feel obliged to cite two cases of women (two exceptions) that violated the rule of stupid, reckless duels as being only the domain of men. Two Londoners and two Neapolitans.
The two Londoners, Mrs. Elphinstone and Lady Almeria Braddock, met for tea at Lady Braddock's estate. It was 1792, and the scene was dutifully reported in Carlton House Magazine.
Mrs. Elphinstone said to her friend. "You were a very beautiful woman."
Lady Braddock: "I was? What are you trying to say with 'I was'?"
Mrs. Elphinstone: "You still have a beautiful face today... autumnal. Your lilies and roses are a little faded, but they told me that forty years ago, no young man could resist them."
Lady Braddock: "Forty years ago? But what are you saying?! I was not even born thirty years ago!"
But the naughty Mrs. Elphinstone wouldn't have it: "That, my lady, is false; you are twice that age!" Then, Lady Almeria Braddock: "Well, this is not tolerable! You have insulted me. And this insult shall be washed with blood."
Mrs Elphinstone: "Swords or pistols?"
Lady Almeria: "Both!"
The two ladies met in Hyde Park and faced off with pistols. Mrs. Elphinstone was a better shot, placing a bullet in Almeria Braddock's hat. Their seconds begged her to end it there, but Mrs. Elphinstone refused to apologize, and hostilities began again, this time with swords. Lady Almeria Braddock managed to scratch her opponent's arm, and, considering their honor satisfied, the two women left the dueling grounds healthy and safe.
On later examination, this story from Carlton House Magazine seems to be completely false. But the amusing allegory remains: women are stupid enough to challenge each other to a duel for vanity but not so stupid as to kill themselves.
For the second exception (which confirms the rule), the Neapolitan duel, we must go back in time to May 1552. This duel between women really happened, and there is, at the Prado Museum, a painting by Jusepe de Ribera (a Spaniard) that documents it.
Isabella Dè Carazzi and Diambra Dè Pottinella were friends, but they both fell in love with the same man, Fabio de Zeresola. They fought it out for him and then challenged each other to a duel. Their duel became the event of the year. The Court of Naples, the Marquis of Pescara, and the future Governor of Milan, Francesco Ferdinando d'Avalos d'Aquindo d'Aragona, were present. The two women mounted their horses, lances at the ready, and rode at breakneck speed towards each other. Neither of them was thrown from the horse. So, they grabbed clubs. Diambra split Isabella's shield in two and then jumped down from her horse. Isabella was lying in the dirt. Diambra ordered her to admit that Fabio was hers. But Isabella stood up, unsheathing her sword, and attacked her, making Diambra fly to the ground. At this point, however, when she was about to stab her, she stopped as if having a sudden thought and sheathed her sword. "We are better than this!" she said to her friend, "After all, who is this Fabio de Zeresola? We are women of value, and what is he? He's just a seducer. Should we kill ourselves over a man? No!"