On the night of August 2, 1914, Dorcieres and a few of his old cronies--old because all of the younger men who had consorted with him were mustered into the Army--gathered at their table in their favorite café. "My friends," said Dorcieres, as calmly as though he had been announcing that he was going to Deauville for a holiday at the seaside, "I bid you farewell. To-night I am going to volunteer as a soldier of France. "You may wonder why, at the age of thirty-nine, I voluntarily enlist in the Army, and why I choose to enter the aviation service, distinctly the place for a youth. Listen, then. You have always believed that I have never suffered an affront in my life that was not avenged. But there was one time when I was insulted--grossly--and the man who did it escaped me. Do you remember the winter, five years ago, that I passed in Switzerland? It was there, when I was stopping in Zurich, that the thing occurred. It was after dinner, when the man sitting next to me nudged my shoulder. "'So you are Rouzier Dorcieres,' he said. 'I recognize you. And they say you have never been touched in a duel. Well, I am sorry I have never had the good fortune to meet you in one.' Then he laughed a sneering laugh. "My blood boiled. 'But you will have the chance to meet me to-morrow morning,' I replied, glaring at him for his insolence. And then as I surveyed his countenance I saw the answer for his piggishness. He was a Prussian. "'No,' he answered me, 'I will not be able to avail myself of the pleasure of measuring swords with you, as I leave for Germany on the midnight train. I am attached to the Imperial Aviation Corps and must report at Johannisthal to-morrow.' "I looked at my watch. It was but a few minutes after eight o'clock. 'Then I will teach you your lesson to-night,' I told him. "'Monsieur,' he said, 'I shall meet you here before ten o'clock with my seconds and the swords. We will settle this affair before I depart.' "I bowed with pleasure as he stalked from the restaurant. And then whom did I see sitting near me but our old friend, the Comte de B----, as fine a second as any man ever had. In a few words I had recounted the incident and called on him to act in my behalf. I waited in that restaurant with the Comte until eleven o'clock. The Prussian officer did not appear. Two years afterward I read in a dispatch from Berlin of his being brevetted as an aviator in the Kaiser's service, and recently I read of how he was working in the air-service of the German Army. "That is why I enter the aviation service of France. Because I still hope to meet him and make him repay his debt of honor to me." Dorcieres went to the front to seek in the air the only man who had ever insulted him and failed to pay the price. His pilot, the aviator who operated the aeroplane in which he fought his last duel, told the rest of the story to Dorcieres's friends long after the official bulletins had announced his death: