Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96, RIP

Le Pen served as the enthusiastic second in a famous 1958 duel.

My favorite bit from Le Pen’s life was when he cajoled an elderly marquis and a middle-aged choreographer into fighting a duel in 1958.

Mark Twain was similarly a blood-thirsty second in a Parisian duel:

SIR: M. Gambetta accepts M. Fourtou's challenge, and authorizes me to propose Plessis-Piquet as the place of meeting; tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time; and axes as the weapons. I am, sir, with great respect,

MARK TWAIN.

M. Fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered. Then he turned to me, and said, with a suggestion of severity in his tone:,—

"Have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable result of such a meeting as this?"

"Well, for instance, what would it be?"

"Bloodshed!"

"That's about the size of it," I said. "Now, if it is a fair question, what was your side proposing to shed?"

I had him there. He saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened to explain it away. He said he had spoken jestingly. Then he added that he and his principal would enjoy axes, and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred by the French code, and so I must change my proposal.

I walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind, and finally it occurred to me that Gatling-guns at fifteen paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field of honor. So I framed this idea into a proposition.

But it was not accepted. The code was in the way again. I proposed rifles; then double-barreled shotguns; then Colt's navy revolvers. These being all rejected, I reflected awhile, and sarcastically suggested brickbats at three-quarters of a mile. I always hate to fool away a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humor; and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly away to submit the last proposition to his principal.

He came back presently and said his principal was charmed with the idea of brickbats at three-quarters of a mile, but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested parties passing between them. Then I said:

"Well, I am at the end of my string, now. Perhaps you would be good enough to suggest a weapon? Perhaps you have even had one in your mind all the time?"

His countenance brightened, and he said with alacrity:

"Oh, without doubt, monsieur!"

So he fell to hunting in his pockets,—pocket after pocket, and he had plenty of them,—muttering all the while, "Now, what could I have done with them?"

At last he was successful. He fished out of his vest pocket a couple of little things which I carried to the light and ascertained to be pistols. They were single-barreled and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty. I was not able to speak for emotion. I silently hung one of them on my watch chain, and returned the other.

From Time Magazine in 1958, in an article entitled “Gay Blades” 67 years ago:

At intermission, sighting [Marquis] Cuevas in the crowd. [Choreographer] Lifar rushed up to him, theatrically flung a scented handkerchief at the marquis' exquisitely shod feet. Painfully, the ancient marquis bent down, picked up the handkerchief, flourished it in Lifar's face while photographers' flashbulbs flared. Said a bystander: "I thought they were embracing." Au contraire.

After the performance, Dancer Lifar tossed his black locks in indignation, declared that he was challenging Cuevas to a duel. "Out of respect for his great age," he would allow the marquis the choice of weapons. The marquis answered. "I wish I could choose the whip, to give him a good drubbing," but decided on the more conventional épée.

While photographers and newsmen crowded his swank Faubourg St.-Germain apartment, Cuevas briskly flourished an épée in front of a gilt mirror—or as briskly as his rheumatism, poor eyesight and recently broken leg would permit. Lifar, in turn, exhibited his thrusts and parries to newsmen at a local fencing school, where he was practicing. At a chance meeting in a TV studio, brutal words were exchanged. Cried Lifar: "I feel sorry for you; you can hardly see. But I'll make you dance a minuet to my épée." Replied Cuevas: "Your handkerchief was so starched it could almost have drawn blood."

But neither man apparently had counted on the bloodthirstiness of his seconds. The marquis' principal second, an ex-paratrooper named Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is a far-right-wing Deputy in the National Assembly, reported to Cuevas that there were no grounds for a reconciliation, told him: "I've just come from a meeting with Lifar's seconds. We've decided not to tell either you or Lifar where the duel will take place, because you're sure to blab about it. We'll take you there at the last moment.''

At this news the marquis paled, objected feebly that the U.S. embassy (Chilean-born Cuevas is a U.S. citizen and married to a Rockefeller heiress) and the French police were both opposed to the duel. Le Pen, who habitually carries a revolver and a dagger to protect himself from Algerian terrorists and other menacing elements, replied icily: "Surely, you do not wish to engage a French officer and a Deputy in an affair of honor which will degenerate into a farce?"

At week's end the dawdling duelists finally faced each other in the garden of an estate 50 miles from Paris. Serge Lifar arrived bearing a Greek icon, a dagger, a pair of ballet slippers and a small potted plant ("These are my symbols—faith, honor, art and life"). After six minutes of sword waving, the Marquis de Cuevas got home a stroke, managed to pink Lifar on the forearm. The marquis burst into tears, collapsed on the brawny shoulder of his second, Le Pen. Lifar bounded lightly over to the weeping marquis, fell into his arms crying: "I knew it would end in an embrace!" Thirty reporters and photographers, who had covered every nuance of the affair of honor, packed up their equipment and went home.