all the prospects of life were opening before me, and I was about to
shut the gate with my own hand. In these thoughts I was still too young
for what is called personal peril to intervene. The graver precaution of
more advanced years was entirely out of the question. I was a soldier,
or about to be one; and I would have rejoiced, if the opportunity had
been given to me, in heading a forlorn hope, or doing any other of those
showy things which make a name. The war, too, was beginning--my future
regiment was ordered for foreign service--every heart in England was
beating with hope or fear--every eye of Europe was fixed upon England
and Englishmen; and, in the midst of all this high excitement, to fall
in a pitiful private quarrel, struck me with a sudden sense of
self-contempt and wilful absurdity, that made me almost loathe my being.
I acknowledge that the higher thoughts, which place those rencontres in
their most criminal point of view, had then but little influence with
me. But to think that, within the next hour, or the next five minutes, I
might be but like the sleepers in the rude resting-place of the
fishermen; with my name unknown, and all the associations of life
extinguished--

"This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod"--

was an absolute pang. I could have died a martyr, and despised the
flame, or rather rejoiced in it, as a security that I should not perish
forgotten. But a fancied wrong, an obscure dispute, the whole future of
an existence flung away for the jealous dreams of a mad Frenchman, or
the Sport of a coquette, of whom I knew as little as of her fantastic
lover, threw me into a fever of scorn for the solemn follies of mankind.

The captain returned. I had not stirred from the spot.