The old belief, in France and England equally, was that the appeal to arms was an appeal to divine justice, and that God himself would interfere in the battle by protecting the combatant whose quarrel was rightful against the power and malice of his assailant. So long as this belief prevailed, a duel was incomparably more reasonable than is an action-at-law in the present day, for it appealed to infallible instead of to fallible justice, and in addition to being reasonable, it was distinctly a pious act, as the combatant proved his faith by staking his existence on his trust in the divine protection. “He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” The faith of David was the faith of the Middle Ages. [Sidenote: Duelling Irrational without a Providence.] The custom lasted longer than the belief, even in England, and in France it has long survived all faith in supernatural interference. The duel is utterly irrational when people do not believe that God will protect an inferior swordsman, with right on his side, against a better swordsman in the wrong, or that he will spare the innocent by deflecting the course of a bullet well aimed by a wicked adversary. [Sidenote: The Religion of Honour.] There has been, however, the intervention of a sort of secondary religion between the old one and modern unbelief. There has been the religion of honour. According to this, a man of honour was bound to expose his life on certain occasions to the rapier or pistol of a private enemy, and, if he fell, he fell a martyr to this religion of honour, leaving a name unsullied by the stain of cowardice, which was the equivalent of infidelity or apostasy. [Sidenote: The old English Sentiment.] [Sidenote: The French Sentiment about Honour.] This religion survived in England even so late as the first half of the present century, and it still survives in France. The old English sentiment,--I say the old sentiment because contemporary Englishmen have got so far past it, though it is very recent in mere date,--the old English sentiment was expressed by Thackeray in the challenge sent by Clive Newcome to his cousin Barnes, and in the gratification it afforded to Sir George Tufto and to the Colonel, both of them elderly men. Nevertheless, as Thackeray knew that the religion of duelling was already dead in England when he wrote, he took care to make the action of Clive acceptable by assigning to it filial affection as a motive. The French sentiment about honour was described with disapproval in the case of de Castillonnes and Lord Kew. “Castillonnes had no idea but that he was going to the field of honour; stood with an undaunted scowl before his enemy’s pistol; and discharged his own, and brought down his opponent, with a grim satisfaction and a comfortable conviction afterwards that he had acted _en galant homme_.” And so, no doubt, he had, not only according to modern French ideas, but according to old English ideas also. [Sidenote: The Newcomes.]