For a generation Rouzier Dorcieres has been one of the most picturesque
figures in Parisian life, holding the unique position of the dean of
duellists. A dinner was given to him in April, 1911, by two hundred
and fifty men, every one of whom had either fought a duel with him,
been his or his opponent's second in a duel, been seconded by him, or
had participated as principal or second in a duel he "directed." All
told, he had been director of 267 sword or pistol combats, and of the
occasions on which he had played the rôle of second he had completely
lost count. He himself had fought no fewer than twenty-five duels,
fifteen with the sword and ten with the pistol.
It is not surprising, then, that such a firebrand volunteered to
serve France in arms when the war broke out, though he had passed
the age limit set by the order of mobilization. Bulletins announced
that fact at the time, and added that he had been attached to the
aviation service. Bulletins equally brief announced that Dorcieres
was "missing"--presumably either dead or wounded. No further details
have been given of his fate until this story of the dramatic end of a
remarkable man.
* * * * *
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:
"He told me to find you, messieurs, and to tell you just what he told
me as he lay dying--dying from eleven machine-gun bullets which riddled
his torso in that last combat which nearly cost me, also, my life.
"Rouzier Dorcieres was the strangest machine-gunner I ever had with
me. Unlike other gunners, he always carried binoculars, and when we
sighted and approached a _Boche_ aeroplane he spent his preliminary
time in peering intently at the occupants of the enemy machine instead
of preparing and testing his mitrailleuse anxiously as most gunners do.
"As we circled near the German machine in his last flight Dorcieres
passed me a scrap of paper. On it he had scrawled a request that I
swoop past the German as near as I could. Instantly I divined his
reason--and his reason for always carrying and using his high-power
glasses. He thought he recognized one of the occupants of the other
aeroplane.
"I swerved and doubled and shot past the _Fokker's_ tail. Dorcieres's
eyes had been riveted to the glasses, but he dropped them now,
heedlessly, and they smashed in the bottom of the fuselage.
"Dorcieres's right hand was on the mitrailleuse-trigger and his left
was feeding the cartridge-belt cleanly into the loading-chamber as we
rounded and flashed by, abreast, but a little higher, than the enemy.
"Taca-tac-pouf-pouf-taca-tac-pouf-pouf--and he drove thirty rounds at
the _Fokker_. And then as I swerved the _Boche_ turned upward and let
fly at us. He had been traveling faster than I thought, because my
mind had been distracted by approaching too near him at Dorcieres's
request, and he reached us with every shot from his machine gun. Our
fuselage cracked and splintered as the leaden hail perforated the
car and the choking gasps that I heard behind me were the positive
indications that my gunner had been hit. I, too, turned upward, as my
motor was undamaged and climbed with the German. Then we both planed
and approached each other. I heard my mitrailleuse begin to spit at the
exact fraction of a second that we came within range, and the enemy gun
never once barked a reply. Dorcieres's first shot must have killed the
enemy gunner. And his torrent of bullets ripped off the tail of the
_Fokker_ and it dived into our lines like a stone, nose down.
"I landed within fifty yards of the broken _Boche_ car and its
occupants. Two stretchers were waiting there for us, but I was unhurt,
miraculously. We put Dorcieres in one, tenderly as a baby, and then
started off. But he had seen the wreck of the _Fokker_ there and he
begged that we stop beside it.
"Beside the German machine were the pilot and the gunner, both dead.
By a superhuman effort my dying gunner raised himself on his elbow. He
gazed at the face of the enemy machine-gunner.
"'It is he,' was all he said. And we carried him to the field-hospital.
"That afternoon I went to see him. He was pretty nearly gone. That
is when he explained, and that is when he asked me to convey to you,
messieurs, this message--that he had avenged his honor."
These stories of the aviators could be told indefinitely; how they met
in mortal combats in the clouds; how they act as sky-pilots for the
armies; how they raided the Krupp gun works; how they soar over the
navies, but they must be left for future volumes for they are creating
a history of their own--one of the most remarkable in the annals of war.
(The foregoing stories have been gathered by the _Literary Digest_ from
various sources.)