The Chevalier Who Wouldn't Lie Down

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was the finest swordsman in Europe. He was also its finest violinist. He conducted one of the great orchestras of Paris, composed fourteen violin concertos, and negotiated the commission that produced Haydn's "Paris" symphonies. John Adams, not a man given to flattery, said Saint-Georges could shoot any button off any coat worn by any master in France.

In July 1790, he was dying of meningitis.

He was forty-four. He was in Lille. There was a fencing tournament. He entered it anyway.

The town guard supplied most of his opponents. One by one, he beat them. Witnesses said his arms moved like lightning, which is the sort of thing witnesses always say, except that in this case the man's arms were moving like lightning while his brain was slowly swelling inside his skull. He defeated nearly every opponent the town could put in front of him.

One does not fence a municipal garrison while dying of a brain infection out of competitive spirit. One does it because one has decided that death will have to wait its turn.

After the final bout, he collapsed. He did not regain consciousness for four days. The coma should have killed him. It did not. He lived nine more years, commanded a regiment during the Revolution, and died in Paris in the spring of 1799.

But in Lille, in the summer heat, he was still standing.