Mystification

what he termed “the refinedly peculiar character” of the insult he had received. After a tiresome harangue in his ordinary style, he took down from his book shelves a number of musty volumes on the subject of the duello, and entertained me for a long time with their contents; reading aloud, and commenting earnestly as he read. I can just remember the titles of some of the works. There were the Ordonnance of Philip le Bel on Single Combat ; the Theatre of Honor , by Favyn, and a treatise On the Permission of Duels , by Andiguier. He displayed, also, with much pomposity, Brantome’s Memoirs of Duels , published at Cologne, 1666, in the types of Elzevir⁠—a precious and unique vellum-paper volume, with a fine margin, and bound by Derome. But he requested my attention particularly, and with an air of mysterious sagacity, to a thick octavo, written in barbarous Latin by one Hedelin, a Frenchman, and having the quaint title, Duelli Lex Scripta, et non; aliterque . From this he read me one of the drollest chapters in the world concerning “ Injuriae per applicationem, per constructionem, et per se