ent stringently serious when he beholds the stream first broadening
perchance under the light interpenetrating mine just now.

My seconds were young Eckart vom Hof, and the barely much older, though
already famous Gregorius Bandelmeyer, a noted mathematician, a savage
Republican, lean-faced, spectacled, and long, soft-fingered; a cat to
look at, a tiger to touch. Both of them were animated by detestation of
the Imperial uniform. They distrusted my skill in the management of the
weapon I had chosen; for reasons of their own they carried a case of
pistols to the field. Prince Otto was attended by Count Loepel and a
Major Edelsheim of his army, fresh from the garrison fortress of Mainz,
gentlemen perfectly conversant with the laws of the game, which my
worthy comrades were not. Several minutes were spent in an altercation
between Edelsheim and Bandelmeyer. The major might have had an affair
of his own had he pleased. My feelings were concentrated within the
immediate ring where I stood: I can compare them only to those of a
gambler determined to throw his largest stake and abide the issue. I
was not open to any distinct impression of the surrounding scenery; the
hills and leafage seemed to wear an iron aspect. My darling, my saint's
face was shut up in my heart, and with it a little inaudible cry of love
and pain. The prince declined to listen to apologies. 'He meant to
teach me that this was not a laughing matter.' Major Edelsheim had
misunderstood Bandelmeyer; no offer of an apology had been made. A
momentary human sensation of an unworthy sort beset me when I saw
them standing together again, and contrasted the collectedness and
good-humour of my adversary's representative with the vexatious
and unnecessary naggling of mine, the sight of whose yard-long pipe
scandalized me.

At last the practical word was given. The prince did not reply to my
salute. He was smoking, and kept his cigar in one corner of his mouth,
as if he were a master fencer bidding his pupil to come on. He assumed
that he had to do with a bourgeois Briton unused to arms, such as we
are generally held to be on the Continent. After feeling my wrist for a
while he shook the cigar out of his teeth.

The 'cliquetis' of the crossed steel must be very distant in memory, and
yourself in a most dilettante frame of mind, for you to be accessible to
the music of that thin skeleton's clank. Nevertheless, it is better and
finer even at the time of action, than th