"Sir," said the officer, with some heat, "I bring you a cartel, and I am
an officer of the Kaiser. What is your answer?"

"Then, Herr Hauptmann," said the Englishman, "since you are a soldier,
you and I know what fighting is, and that snipping and snicking at noses
is no fighting. Tell your friend to come up here and have a turn with
the two-ounce gloves, and I shall be happy to give him all the
satisfaction he wants. Otherwise I will only fight him with pistols, and
to the death also. If he will not fight in my way, I shall beat him with
a cane for having insulted me, whenever I meet him."

With that the officer came down to me, and he said, "It is as you
thought. The Englishman will not fight with the Schläger, but he has
more steel in his veins than a dozen of Hellmuths. Thunderweather, I
shall fight Hellmuth myself to-morrow morning, if it be that he burns so
greatly to be led away. Once before I gave him a scar of heavenly
beauty!"

So he clanked off in the ten days' glory of his spurs. I have seen many
such as he stiff on the slope of Spichern and in the woods beneath St.
Germain. Yet he was a Kerl of mettle, and will make a brave soldier and
upstanding officer.

But the Herr has again come in and he says that all this is a particular
kind of nonsense which, because I write also for ladies, I shall not
mention. I am not sure, also, what English words it is proper to put on
paper. The Herr says that he will tear every word up that I have
written, which would be a sad waste of the Frau Wittwe's paper and ink.
He says, this hot Junker, that in all my writing there is yet no word of
Paris or the days of the Commune, which is true. He also says that my