Chapter 7 - Page 2

scars are of a very strange and dreadful
aspect; and the effect is striking when several such accent the milder
ones, which form a city map on a man's face; they suggest the "burned
district" then. We had often noticed that many of the students wore
a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. It
transpired that this signifies that the wearer has fought three duels
in which a decision was reached--duels in which he either whipped or
was whipped--for drawn battles do not count. [1] After a student has
received his ribbon, he is "free"; he can cease from fighting, without
reproach--except some one insult him; his president cannot appoint him
to fight; he can volunteer if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he
prefers to do so. Statistics show that he does NOT prefer to remain
quiescent. They show that the duel has a singular fascination about it
somewhere, for these free men, so far from resting upon the privilege
of the badge, are always volunteering. A corps student told me it was of
record that Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single
summer term when he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine after his
badge had given him the right to retire from the field.

1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar,
in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed
portrait-groups of the Five Corps; some were recent,
but many antedated photography, and were pictured in
lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty
years ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across
his breast. In one portrait-group representing (as each
of these pictures did) an entire Corps, I took pains
to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven members,
and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge.

The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars.
Two days in every week are devoted to dueling. The rule is rigid that
there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally
more, but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day I was present;
sometimes there are seven or eight. It is insisted that eight duels a
week--four for each of the two days--is too low an average to draw
a calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, preferring an
understatement to an overstatement of the case. This requires about four
hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year--for in summer the
college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four
months and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty students in
the university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belonged to the
five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionally
other students borrow the arms and