The seconds withdrew, and I found myself alone with M. Gaillardet, Bixio and the brother of M. Gaillardet, who had come through the wood just as the firing took place. I then proposed to M. Gaillardet, as we now had two seconds and two swords, to make use of both men and arms. He refused. Thereupon Bixio and I got into the carriage and returned by the road to Paris.[1] We set out by mail-coach a couple of hours later for Rouen, with Fontan and Dupeuty. Bixio was twice again my second; but one of the two duels was with swords, and the other not taking place at all, he had not the chance of assuring himself as to whether a man wounded or killed by a bullet turns round before he falls. He had to make the experiment on himself. In the month of June 1848, as, in his capacity of representative of the people, Bixio was walking with his customary courage by the Panthéon barricade, a bullet, fired from the first floor of a house in the rue Soufflot, hit him above the collar-bone, ploughed into his right lung, and, after a course of fifteen to eighteen inches, lodged near the spine. Bixio turned round three times and fell. "_Without any doubt of it one turns round!"_ he said. The problem was solved. (PUBLISHERS' NOTE.) "My DEAR FOURNIER,--A decree passed by the Courts in 1832 ordered that _La Tour de Nesle_ should be printed and billed with my name alone; and this was done, in fact up to 1851, the period when it was forbidden. Now that we are going to revive it, I allow you, and even beg you, to join my name with that of Alexandre Dumas my collaborator, to whom I wish to prove that I have forgotten our old quarrels, and only remember our good relations in the past, and the large part his incomparable talent had in the success of _La Tour de Nesle._--Yours, etc., F. GAILLARDET "PARIS, 25 _April_ 1864" [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.--The above note appears in the current edition of the Memoirs. In the Appendix to the Paris edition of 1854 will be found a long letter by M. F. Gaillardet, dated 12 April 1854, which Dumas did not reproduce in the Brussels edition.] [Footnote 1: In order to close the story of this quarrel, which made such a stir in the literary world, we think we had better reproduce here the letter which M. Gaillardet, with an impulse which does him honour, wrote spontaneously to M. Marc Fournier, manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, since the revival of _La Tour de Nesle_ at that theatre, in 1861.] BOOK IV CHAPTER I The masquerade of the budget at Grenoble--M. Maurice Duval--The serenaders--Escapade of the 35th of the line--The insurrection it excites--Arrest of General Saint-Clair--Taking of the préfecture and of the citadel by Bastide--Bastide at Lyons--Order reigns at Grenoble--Casimir Périer, Garnier-Pagès and M. Dupin--Report of the municipality of Grenoble--Acquittal of the rioters--Restoration of the 35th--Protest of a smoker