es, or have you any
peculiar directions on any subject?"

"You made a remark last night, Herr Rittmeister," said I, "which did not
at the moment produce the profound impression upon me that subsequent
reflection has enforced. You said that if his Royal Highness were
fully aware that his antagonist was the son of a practising chemist and
apothecary--"

"That I could have, put off this event; true enough, but when you
refused that alternative, and insisted on satisfaction, I myself, as
your countryman, gave the guarantee for your rank, which nothing now
will make me retract Understand me well,--nothing will make me retract."

"You are pleased to be precipitate," said I, with an attempt to sneer;
"my remark had but one object, and that was my personal disinclination
to obtain a meeting under a false pretext."

"Make your mind easy on that score. It will be all precisely the same in
about an hour hence."

I nearly fainted as I heard this; it seemed as though a cold stream of
water ran through my spine and paralyzed the very marrow inside.

"You have your choice of weapons," said he, curtly; "which are you best
at?"

I was going to say the "javelin," but I was ashamed; and yet should
a man sacrifice life for a false modesty? While I reasoned thus, he
pointed to a group of officers close to the garden wall of the convent,
and said,--

"They are all waiting yonder; let us hasten on."

If I had been mortally wounded, and was dragging my feeble limbs along
to rest them forever on some particular spot, I might have, probably,
effected my progress as easily as I now did. The slightest inequality of
ground tripped me, and I stumbled at every step.

"You are cold," said my companion, "and probably unused to early
rising,--taste this."

He gave me his brandy-flask, and I finished it off at a draught.
Blessings be on the man who invented alcohol!

All the ethics that ever were written cannot work the same miracle in
a man's nature as a glass of whiskey. Talk of all the wonders of
chemistry, and what are they to the simple fact that twopennyworth of
cognac can convert a coward into a hero?

I was not quite sure that my antagonist had not resorted to a similar
sort of aid, for he seemed as light-hearted and as jolly as though he
was out for a picnic. There was a jauntiness, too, in the way he took
out his cigar, and scraped his lucifer-match on a beech-tree, that quite
struck me, and I should like to have imitated it if