The seconds who assisted MM. Kirchhoffer and Lucien Mérignac in their successful counter with their Italian rivals, Signors Vega and Pessina, are wroth with the Italian seconds for tampering. they assert, with the "preces-verbal" or official record of the duel. M. Georges Breittmaver, one of the French seconds, is also reported to have incurred the displeasure of Signor Pini, the famous Italian swordsman, so that, if all goes well, there may be another sensational fight or two before long. These little affairs always excite a great deal of interest in Paris, because everybody who is anybody has fenced at some neried of his life. French boys are taught fencing at the lyctes, they have to keep it up during their military training, and in later life few fail to practise more or less assiduously at some salle armes. These places are very numerous in all large towns and constitute regular nurseries of the duel. In the most up-to-date of these establishments in Paris, practice ix carried on under the conditions followed on the field of honour. The boundaries are marked out, time is called at the conclusion of every round, friends are in attendance as seconds, and, in short, everything possible is done to prepare the members for the real encounter in which it is supposed they must sooner or later be involved during the excitements of Parisian life. The same strictness is observed in the pistol gallery. 'The target is a black silhouette just the shape and size of a man, wearing a tall hat and a frock coat, as he would appear at a distance of twenty' yards or so. Hits do not count unless the pistol has been discharged in the proper interval, that is to say. after the word "Feu!" and before the last. of the three subsequent words of command, "Un-deux, trois 1"
The Fencing Academy.
The ordinary Parisian sulla darmes (pri-yate rooms being of course left out of account) is often a residential flat or flats converted by a judicious rearrangement of partitions. A combination of back and front room thrown into one serves for the "assaults." Tt would hardly withstand Mr. Dick's test of swin ing " cat in it, but fencing does not require much lateral space. 'The walls are usually painted in some light tint and are adorned only by racks containing the pupils' swords or foils and masks, Hard by is a small and severely simple off-room, wherein the details of affairs of honour are discussed. The pistol gallery is an extension of a ground-floor apartment into the courtyard of the house, and the establishment is completed by one or two poky dressing-rooms, a. smoking-room and perhaps a shower-bath. The fees come to about £10 or £20 a year. according to the locality and standing of the academy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.