brimming full of half-melted snow. The light was bright, for, as I tell
you, it was underneath the lamps at the bridge-end. The moon also
happened to come out from behind a wrack of cloud, and all the men on
the bridge saw--and the girls with them also--so that you could hear the
laughing at the Molkenkur, till the burghers put their red night-caps
out of their windows to know what had happened to the wild Kerls of the
_cafés_."

"But surely that is no cause for a challenge, Excellenz?" said I. "How
can an officer of the Kaiser bring such a challenge?"

"Ach!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "is not a fight a fight, cause
or no cause? Moreover, is not Hellmuth after all the son of my mother's
sister, though but a Rhineland donkey, and void of sense?"

So I showed him up to the room of the English Herr, and went away again,
though not so far but that I could hear their voices.

It was the officer whom I heard speaking first. He spoke loudly, and as
I say, having been of the Intelligence Department, I did not go too far
away.

"You have my friend insulted, and you must immediately satisfaction
make!" said the young Officier.

"That will I gladly do, if your friend will deign to come up here. There
are more ways of fighting than getting into a feather-bed and cutting at
the corners." So our young Englander spoke, with his high voice, piping
and clipping his words as all the English do.