Across the Zodiac | Page 4

numbers, to prove his
personal courage with sword or pistol, or to think that any one would have doubted either
his spirit or his nerve had he refused to fight, whatever the provocation. Moreover, in
each case he was the challenger."
"Then these duels have injured him in Southern opinion, and have probably tended to
isolate him from society?"
"No," he replied. "Deeply as they were regretted and disapproved, his services during the
war were so brilliant, and his personal character stands so high, that nothing could have
induced his fellow-soldiers to put any social stigma upon him. To me he must know that
he would be most welcome. Yet, though we have lived in the same city for five years, I
have only encountered him three or four times in the street, and then he has passed with
the fewest possible words, and has neither given me his address nor accepted my urgent
invitations to visit us here. I think that there is something in the story of those duels that
will never be known, certainly something that has never been guessed yet. And I think
that either the circumstances in which they must have had their origin, or the duels
themselves, have so weighed upon his spirits, perhaps upon his conscience, that he has
chosen to avoid his former friends, most of them also the friends of his antagonists.
Though the war ruined him as utterly as any of the thousands of Southern gentlemen
whom it has reduced from wealth to absolute poverty, he has refused every employment
which would bring him before the public eye."
"Is there," I asked, "any point of honour on which you could suppose him to be so
exceptionally sensitive that he would think it necessary to take the life of a man who
touched him on that point, though afterwards his regret, if not repentance, might be keen
enough to crush his spirit or break his heart?"
The General paused for a moment, and his son then interposed--
"I have heard it said that Colonel A---- was in general the least quarrelsome of
Confederate officers; but that on more than one occasion, where his statement upon some
point of fact had been challenged by a comrade, who did not intend to question his
veracity but simply the accuracy of his observation, their brother officers had much
trouble in preventing a serious difficulty."
The next day I called as agreed upon my new-found friend, and with some reluctance he
commenced his story.
"During the last campaign, in February 1865, I was sent by General Lee with despatches
for Kirby Smith, then commanding beyond the Mississippi. I was unable to return before
the surrender, and, for reasons into which I need not enter, I believed myself to be
marked out by the Federal Government for vengeance. If I had remained within their
reach, I might have shared the fate of Wirz and other victims of calumnies which, once
put in circulation during the war, their official authors dared not retract at its close. Now I

and others, who, if captured in 1865, might probably have been hanged, are neither
molested nor even suspected of any other offence than that of fighting, as our opponents
fought, for the State to which our allegiance was due. However, I thought it necessary to
escape before the final surrender of our forces beyond the Mississippi. I made my way to
Mexico, and, like one or two Southern officers of greater distinction than myself, entered
the service of the Emperor Maximilian, not as mere soldiers of fortune, but because,
knowing better than any but her Southern neighbours knew it the miserable anarchy of
Mexico under the Republic, we regarded conquest as the one chance of regeneration for
that country, and the Emperor Maximilian as a hero who had devoted himself to a task
heroic at once in its danger and difficulty--the restoration of a people with whom his
house had a certain historical connection to a place among the nations of the civilised
world. After his fall, I should certainly have been shot had I been caught by the Juarists in
pursuit of me. I gained the Pacific coast, and got on board an English vessel, whose
captain--loading for San Francisco--generously weighed anchor and sailed with but half a
cargo to give me a chance of safety. He transferred me a few days afterwards to a Dutch
vessel bound for Brisbane, for at that time I thought of settling in Queensland. The crew
was weak-handed, and consisted chiefly of Lascars, Malays, and two or three European
desperadoes of all languages and of no country. Her master was barely competent to the
ordinary duties of his command; and it was no surprise to me when the first storm that we
encountered