It appears that all these edicts, notwithstanding the severity of their formulary, were unheeded, and seldom or never carried into execution; indeed, there were as many saving clauses and loop-holes in these decrees as in any of our modern acts of parliament, through which it has been truly observed, one could drive a coach and four: for instance, while duels were denounced as impious and infamous, it was provided that the offended parties should have the power of applying to the sovereign through the marshals of France for permission to fight; another clause specified that “a person who demanded a battle without sufficient reason, should be dismissed with shame:” but there is not a single instance of the application of this law upon record; and D’Audiguier observes, “that as the King never granted permission to fight to any applicant, and had frequently refused it, it was evident that there was no use in making an application, therefore the parties came to blows without any reference to authority, and were, with very few exceptions, pardoned by the royal clemency.” Sully observes on this subject, “that the facility with which the King forgave duels tended to multiply them, and hence these fatal examples pervaded the court, the town, and the kingdom.” Montaigne says on this subject, that he verily believes, “if three Frenchmen were put into the Libyan desert, they would not be a month there without quarrelling and fighting;” and Hardouin de Perefix, Bishop of Rhodes, observes, in his Life of Henry IV, “that the madness of duels did seize the spirits of the nobility and gentry so much, that they lost more blood by each other’s hands in time of peace, than had been shed by their enemies in battle.” Chevalier, in his work called “Les Ombres des Defunts,” asserts that, in the province of Limousin alone, in the space of six or seven months, there were killed one hundred and twenty gentlemen. But such is the empire of prejudice, and the contagion of fashion, that Sully frankly avows that he was nigh quarrelling with his royal master for having had the imprudence to consent to be present at a duel, when Henry IV. briefly told him that he deserved to lose his head for having dared to assume a regal power in the precincts of his court; and most probably the minister would have been disgraced, but for the interference of the ladies of the court.