One could argue, in fact, that all pagan order was just such an order of sacrifice, a system of exclusion, which mactated the singular so as to recover the serener forms of the universal, making a holocaust even of the desirable and the beautiful as an appeasement of the formlessness besetting the fragile order of cosmos and city from every quarter.

Here in this room an old man had killed and boiled a catechumen, had committed sodomy with a rat, had discussed a rodent nunhood with V., a future saint – depending which story you listened to.

Here also of exceptional value were the half-dozen dueling codes published after 1880, gangwaying a detailed analysis in chapter II of the manner in which duels unfolded, and dozens of French sources which formed the core of a chapter on the French duel.

These days Ms. Farrell runs a ballet company based at the Kennedy Center here, and though she has presented works by other choreographers, she is in the vanguard of restoring to the stage ballets by Balanchine that have long passed undanced.