his heartless behavior. Several of them even went
so far as to say that it would have been more fitting for him to have
remained alone just at this time, and to make amends for his past
follies by a term of undisturbed self-inspection; this new orgy they
thought, above all, indecent and coarse.

Two days afterward the confirmation of the sentence pronounced in his
case by the Council of Honor arrived from Berlin. With it came
likewise the permission for Kolberg to enter the army anew as a junior
lieutenant. That, however, meant his transference to another garrison,
for in this one there was no room for him. Before he could start his
career afresh in a beautiful city by the Rhine, Kolberg had to comply
with one other little formality, and that took him to a fortress where
he had to undergo confinement of an easy description, and lasting only
for a couple of months, because he had been guilty of "participation
in a duel with deadly weapons," as his Majesty's decree read.

The major recovered very slowly. The difficult operation undertaken by
two regimental surgeons of removing the bullet imbedded near the
spinal column had not entirely succeeded. The bullet had indeed been
removed, but inflammation of the affected parts had set in, and this
had been accompanied with great pain and a high fever.

It was only towards the close of winter that the major was dismissed
from the hospital as a convalescent. His health and his energy were
both gone, and he was compelled to resign his commission in the army,
his strength being insufficient to discharge the duties of his post.

He also had been sentenced to a three months' term in a fortress in
consonance with the invariable custom followed in such cases by the
Kaiser, which makes no distinction between offender and offended,
between victim and aggressor. But in this instance a confinement of a
few days was considered ample, and at the expiration of this brief
term the imperial pardon reached the broken-down man, and he was
permitted to depart to wherever his inclination might take him.

Kahle thus saw his life's labor destroyed. As a man who had scarcely
reached forty, yet with his physical strength nearly spent, he had to
face the question how and where he was to carve out a new field of
activity for himself. His small pension was wholly insufficient to
enable him to even eke out an existence on it, and he had, besides, by
the decree of the court, been intrusted with the sole