I was something more than something?
The tendency of young men is to conceive it for themselves without
assistance; a prolonged puff from the breath of another is nearly sure to
make them mad as kings, and not so pardonably.

I see that I might have acted wisely, and did not; but that is a
speculation taken apart from my capabilities. If a man's fate were as a
forbidden fruit, detached from him, and in front of him, he might
hesitate fortunately before plucking it; but, as most of us are aware,
the vital half of it lies in the seed-paths he has traversed. We are sons
of yesterday, not of the morning. The past is our mortal mother, no dead
thing. Our future constantly reflects her to the soul. Nor is it ever the
new man of to-day which grasps his fortune, good or ill. We are pushed to
it by the hundreds of days we have buried, eager ghosts. And if you have
not the habit of taking counsel with them, you are but an instrument in
their hands.

My English tongue admonishes me that I have fallen upon a tone resembling
one who uplifts the finger of piety in a salon of conversation. A man's
review of the course of his life grows for a moment 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 cr