Yet it is
evident from various passages in his writings that he held Christian
duty inconsistent with duelling, and that he held himself a sincere
Christian. In spite of this, when he was fifty-six, and under no
conceivable hurry or perturbation of feeling, but only concerned to
defend his own conduct--which was indeed plainly right--as to a
political disclosure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, he
asked his old friend William Clerk to be his second, if the expected
challenge from General Gourgaud should come, and declared his firm
intention of accepting it. On the strength of official evidence he had
exposed some conduct of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, which
appeared to be far from honourable, and he thought it his duty on that
account to submit to be shot at by General Gourgaud, if General
Gourgaud had wished it. In writing to William Clerk to ask him to be
his second, he says, "Like a man who finds himself in a scrape,
General Gourgaud may wish to fight himself out of it, and if the
quarrel should be thrust on me, why, _I will not baulk him, Jackie_.
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