eight o’clock
Nearly all of our officers came in while we were at breakfast to learn if I were still alive , and Lowell gave them most marvellous accounts of the affair , sometimes representing me as an idiot and sometimes as an heroic martyr . They all asked him if he thought Fiske had sufficient influence at Washington to cause the Government to give him the use of the Raleigh against us , but he would only laugh and shake his head . Later , to Laguerre , he talked earnestly on the same subject , and much to the point . The news of the duel had reached the palace at eight o'clock , and the president at once started for the barracks . We knew he was coming when we heard the people in the cafes shouting `` Viva , '' as they always did when he appeared in public , and , though I was badly frightened as to what he would say to me , I ran to the door and turned out the guard to receive him . He had put on one of the foreign uniforms he was entitled to wear -- he did not seem to fancy the one I had designed -- and as he rode across the Plaza I thought I had never seen a finer soldier . Lowell said he looked like a field marshal of the Second Empire .