The Due Shot

The handsome baron d’Anthés likes to flirt with pretty women at parties in St Petersburg. Although married, he begins to seduce the beauty Natalie, wife of the poet Pushkin. The choleric and pathologically jealous poet challenges him. Natalie secretly visits the baron, begging him not to provoke Pushkin. She resists his temptation but her husband does not believe in her innocence and outrageously rapes her when she returns home. The night before the duel, he writes the short story Famous Duels. Its hero is the elegant count Silvio, an excellent shooter. Silvio has an affair with a beautiful married duchess and challenges the young lieutenant Orloff who courts her. The light-minded lieutenant shoots first and misses. Silvio postpones his shot to some other day. The officers play Russian roulette. Silvio challenges the winner but a friend reminds him of his unpaid debt, presses the gun to his own temple and shoots himself dead. The sound of a shot is heard. Orloff marries a glorious girl. Silvio is one of the wedding guests and asks the happy groom for the due shot. But he is moved by the despair of the very young bride and intentionally misses. – Pushkin finished his short story. Before leaving with the seconds, he peeps into the room of Natalie and the children. D’Anthes wounds him fatally in the duel and Alexandr Sergeyevich Pushkin dies on January 27, 1837.