and
to the death also. If he will not fight in my way, I shall beat him with
a cane for having insulted me, whenever I meet him."

With that the officer came down to me, and he said, "It is as you
thought. The Englishman will not fight with the Schlaeger, but he has
more steel in his veins than a dozen of Hellmuths. Thunderweather, I
shall fight Hellmuth myself to-morrow morning, if it be that he burns so
greatly to be led away. Once before I gave him a scar of heavenly
beauty!"

So he clanked off in the ten days' glory of his spurs. I have seen many
such as he stiff on the slope of Spichern and in the woods beneath St.
Germain. Yet he was a Kerl of mettle, and will make a brave soldier and
upstanding officer.

But the Herr has again come in and he says that all this is a particular
kind of nonsense which, because I write also for ladies, I shall not
mention. I am not sure, also, what English words it is proper to put on
paper. The Herr says that he will tear every word up that I have
written, which would be a sad waste of the Frau Wittwe's paper and ink.
He says, this hot Junker, that in all my writing there is yet no word of
Paris or the days of the Commune, which is true. He also says that my
head is the head of a calf, and, indeed, of several other animals that
are but ill-considered in England.

So I will be brief.

In Seventy, therefore, I fought in the field and scouted with the
Uhlans. Ah, I could tell the stories! Those were the days. It is a
mistake to think that the country-people hated us, or tried to kill us.
On the contrary, if I might tell it, many of the young maids--

Ach, bitte, Herr--of a surety I will proceed and tell of Paris. I am
aware that it is not to be expected that the English should care to hear
of the doings of the Reiters of the black-and-white pennon in the matter
of the maids.

But in Seventy-one, during the siege and the terrible days of the
Commune, I was in Paris, what you call a spy. It was the order of the
Chancellor--our man of blood-and-iron. Therefore it was right and not
ignoble that I should be a spy.

For I have served my country in more terrible places than the field of
Weissenburg or the hill of Spichern.

Ja wohl! there were few Prussians who could be taken for Frenchmen, in
Paris during those months when suspicion was everywhere. Yet in Paris I
was, all through the days of the investiture. More, I was chief of
domestic service at the Hotel de Ville, and my lett