"Let me ask you, then, gentlemen, whether it is conceivable that,
entertaining such feelings as these towards single combat, I should
have been led to depart from them under circumstances that might
very well have afforded me an ample shield for refusing satisfaction
to a too eager and pressing adversary? It was precisely because I
hold the duel in such contempt that I spoke with such asperity to
the deceased when he pronounced Lord Wellington's enactment a
degrading one to men of birth. The very sentiments which I then
expressed proclaimed my antipathy to the practice. How, then,
should I have committed the inconsistency of accepting a challenge
upon such grounds from Count Samoval? There is even more irony than
Major Swan supposes in a situation which himself has called ironical.
"So much, then, for the motives that are alleged to have actuated me.
I hope you will conclude that I have answered the prosecution upon
that matter.
"Coming to the question of fact, I cannot find that there is
anything to answer, for nothing has been proved against me. True,
it has been proved that I arrived at Monsanto at half-past eleven
or twenty minutes to twelve on the night of the 28th, and it has
been further proved that half-an-hour later I was discovered
kneeling beside the dead body of Count Samoval.
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