Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon balls were,
however, often fought in St. Anthony's Garden, for the ballroom was in a
building (now occupied by a sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on
Orleans Street, near where it abuts against the Garden. This garden,
bearing the name of the saint whose temptations have been of such
conspicuous interest to painters of the nude, is not named for him so
much in his own right, as because he was the patron of that same Padre
Antonio de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Orleans to
institute the Inquisition, but who, after having been sent away by
Governor Miro, returned as a secular priest and became much beloved for
his good works. Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is
he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's story "Pere Antoine's Date
Palm."
To the Creole, more than to any other source, may be traced the origin
of dueling in the United States, and no city in the country has such a
dueling history as New Orleans. The American took the practice from the
Latin and by the adoption of pistols made the duel a much more serious
thing than it had previously been, when swords were employed and first
blood usually constituted "satisfaction." Up to the time of the Civil
War the man who refused a challenge became a sort of outcast, and I have
been told that even to this day a duel is occasionally fought.
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