Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 213, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1914 — KING OF DUELISTS NO MORE Death Removes Etienne Laberdesque, a Picturesque Figure of French Capital. [ARTICLE]

KING OF DUELISTS NO MORE

Death Removes Etienne Laberdesque, a Picturesque Figure of French Capital.

M. Etienne Laberdesquejs dead and the boulevards of Paris are poorer by reason of his passing, remarks the Kansas City Star. For Laberdesque was the most picturesque of modern swash-bucklers, and he might well have strutted in the muddy streets of Paris what time M. Francois Villon and his friends made those streets unsafe after nightfall. A sort of Twentieth Century D’Artagnan, this Laberdesque bristling for duels with whoever failed to please his fancy. He should undoubtedly have worn doublet and, feathered cap, and a sword might very fittingly have been a part of his everyday costume. As it was he knew how to use a sword as well .as any man in Paris, and he kept his skill from growing rusty. ' Consider, if you will, how he fought five duels with five friends of M. Max Regis, mayor of Algiers, and when the five had been conquered, fought a two day’s duel with the mayor himself. Name of a name! This was a man out of the heart of romance. Of course, those duels were not too bloody; but on the seconh day the mayor was pricked upon the arm a smart touch, and the blood spurted beautifully, and the seconds rushed in, and fell to disagreeing and challenging one another, and the spectators took sides and shouted epithets and defiances at one another; ay, ’twas a most vociferous affair! And M. Regis, dragged away by his brandished his unpricked fist and shouted: “I fought you to show I was not afraid of your sword. You are, nevertheless, an assassin.” Whereupon Laberdesque challenged him to another duel. “Though his clothes were the> prosqic garb of modernity," s.ays the London Globe, speaking of Laberdesque, his spirit belonged to the days of cloak and ruffle, when, men drew swords on a quarrel and spitted their opponents deftly. He was the hero of more than a. hundred duels. Tall and broad, with a brown face, he swaggered along the boulevards a few years ago, ready to pick a quarrel with any one whose presence was obnoxious to him and ask for satisfaction at the point of the sword. His manner was grandiloquent and authoritative. “When he lifted his slouch hat with a medieval flourish, you could almost see a cloak and sword behind his lounge suit. He rolled his name grandly as he delivered his challenge, to those who were luckless enough to merit his anger. ’Laber-r-desque,* he would say. “Laberdesque was born in Cuba ot a Spanish mother. He quarreled” with his family at the age ot eighteen

and went to fight in the Venezuelan revolution. When a involution was threatened in Cuba he turned there, ,■ and in the course of three years fought forty-three duals with saber, pistol and yataghan. His father succeeded in shipping him off to France, where he enlisted in the Spahis. He had astonishing strength and was capable, it is said, even of carrying his own tired horse on his back after being carried about by it all day.” After leaving the , army, Labi Jndesque founded a club in Paris whßh he called “Les Mousquetalres.” All the members were accomplished swordsmen, and they made it ttyrir business to maintain a censorship of Parisan society. When the Mousquetaires decided that a man wouldn’t do at all they sent him a challenge, and he had either to leave Paris or take a chance of being run through the body. To keep in practise the members of the club used notched swords —swords with the points bare, but a notch of wood an inch below, so that though one might wound an opponent, he could not make a wound more than an inch deep. Among his friends Laberdesque was noted not only for his bravery, but for his lavish generosity. What belonged to him belonged to his friends. And how he loved to gather a little knot of listeners around him and with magnificent gesture, rolling voice and flashing eye recount his adventures to them! There Fas a naive, childlike •vanity about the man that quite disarmed hlsxhearers and made his braggadocio the most delightful extravaganza. He was just past 40 when he died, but he had certainly succeeded in cramming a world of living into those 40 years. One of his last duels was with M. Messimy, against whom he ran for a seat in the French chamber of deputies. Messimy boxed Laberdesque*s ears in a public meeting and, of course, nothing but blood could wipe out an insult like that. They met and M. Messimy was disarmed by the famous thrust to the arm, not much more painful or dangerous than a barb wire cut Honor was avenged. Laberdesque leaves a widow, who was the Marquise del'Flores, a beauty of Cuban and Spanish descent. She was a kinswoman of the Spanish ambassador to France.