mous or more frequented
than that of the Baron. Our carousals here were many, and boisterous,
and long, and never unfruitful of events.

Upon one occasion we had protracted our sitting until nearly daybreak,
and an unusual quantity of wine had been drunk. The company consisted of
seven or eight individuals besides the Baron and myself. Most of these
were young men of wealth, of high connection, of great family pride, and
all alive with an exaggerated sense of honor. They abounded in the most
ultra German opinions respecting the duello. To these Quixotic notions
some recent Parisian publications, backed by three or four desperate and
fatal conversation, during the greater part of the night, had run wild
upon the all--engrossing topic of the times. The Baron, who had been
unusually silent and abstracted in the earlier portion of the evening,
at length seemed to be aroused from his apathy, took a leading part in
the discourse, and dwelt upon the benefits, and more especially upon the
beauties, of the received code of etiquette in passages of arms with
an ardor, an eloquence, an impressiveness, and an affectionateness
of manner, which elicited the warmest enthusiasm from his hearers in
general, and absolutely staggered even myself, who well knew him to be
at heart a ridiculer of those very points for which he contended, and
especially to hold the entire fanfaronade of duelling etiquette in the
sovereign contempt which it deserves.

Looking around me during a pause in the Baron's discourse (of which my
readers may gather some faint idea when I say that it bore resemblance
to the fervid, chanting, monotonous, yet musical sermonic manner of
Coleridge), I perceived symptoms of even more than the general interest
in the countenance of one of the party. This gentleman, whom I shall
call Hermann, was an original in every respect--except, perhaps, in the
single particular that he was a very great fool. He contrived to bear,
however, among a particular set at the university, a reputation for deep
metaphysical thinking, and, I believe, for some logical talent. As a
duellist he had acquired who had fallen at his hands; but they were
many. He was a man of courage undoubtedly. But it was upon his minute
acquaintance with the etiquette of the duello, and the nicety of his
sense of honor, that he most especially prided himself. These things
were a hobby which he rode to the death. To Ritzner, ever upon the
lookout for the grotesque, his