'This is to certify that the bearer, O'Hoolohan, 35, Irish of origin, and annuitant by station, unmarried, committed suicide on the 5th day of April, 1866, at Clamart, in the Department of the Seine, and that nobody is blamable for the despair which led him to the act.' As Blue Spectacles read this curt, legally-framed document, he quaked and whitened, and a quiver of his eyes might be detected under their ultramarine protectors. But he nerved himself for the worst; after all, it is much easier to be brave when your bosom friend's fate is in the balance than when your own precious carcass is in peril. The Frenchman, in return, handed O'Hara a perfumed, gilt-edged billet, with an arrow-pierced heart in chromo-lithography at the top of it. As it was characteristic of the Gascon, it may be interesting to give its contents: 'Away, thou hollow world, with all thy vain pomps and glittering gauds! Farewell the friendship that is false, the love that is venal, the happiness that deceives like the desert mirage! Dash down the cup of revelry that brings but the fitful doze; welcome the bullet of relief that summons repose eternal! With my own hands I sign my doom; by my own hands I die! Not for me the roses of hope or the laurels of ambition, but the cypress of despair and disappointment. Cut off a tress of my hair and send it to my mother; a locket with a portrait will be discovered over my heart--bury it in my grave. 'EUGÈNE SIRAUDIN.' 'That will do very nicely,' remarked O'Hara as he read this valentine from beyond the tomb; 'it is tenderly written--Lamartine with a flavour of De Musset. I should like to have a copy to send to the Manuscript Room of the British Museum. I suppose we're all here?' 'Where's your other witness?' asked Pale Face. 'In England we consider one enough; but if you insist upon it, we shall look upon my dog as discharging the duty.' Pale Face grew white as a Pierrot. As for Blue Spectacles, the devil-may-care ease of the Irishman had put him into a blue funk. All this time the principals stood apart, acting the _rôle_ of unconcerned spectators. That is the correct deportment in duels. Eugène Siraudin puffed away at a cigarette; the O'Hoolohan, who was hot and ruddy after his exertions on the bicycle, stretched himself on his back on the turf by the trunk of a roadside poplar.