"You are a model son, Willy, one must confess. It does happen sometimes that one is betrothed at paternal or maternal command, but you dutifully fall in love with your bride-elect besides, and even compose poetry to her."
"But it is not to the right one," exclaimed Willibald suddenly, with such a strained expression that Rojanow looked at him in perplexity. He really believed that his friend was not in his senses; and Willibald must also have felt that he was making a peculiar impression. He therefore began an explanation, but anticipated himself so much and was so vague, that the affair became only the more tangled.
"In fact, I have had an encounter with a fellow this morning who dared to insult a young lady--Fraulein Marietta Volkmar, from the Court Theatre. I knocked him to the ground and I would do it again to him or to anybody who gets too near Fraulein Volkmar."
He stretched out his arm so threateningly that Hartmut caught it quickly and restrained him.
"Well, I do not intend to get near her--you can spare me for the present. But what is Marietta Volkmar to you--the little mirror of virtue of our opera--who has so far been considered unapproachable?"
"Hartmut, I request that you speak of this lady with reverence. In short, this Count Westerburg has challenged me. I am going to exchange shots with him, and hope to give him a good reminder."
"Well, you really are making good progress in romance," said Hartmut, who listened with ever-increasing interest. "You have been here only three days and have commenced with a quarrel which ends in a challenge, and are the knight and protector of a young singer--have a duel for her sake. Willy, for heaven's sake, what will your mother say?"
"This concerns an affair of honor, and my mother cannot interfere here," declared Willy with a really heroic effect, "but now I must get a second here, where I am quite a stranger and do not know a soul. Uncle Herbert must not hear anything about it, of course, or he would interfere with the police. So I decided to come to you and ask you if you would render me this service."
"That was what brought you," said Rojanow, in a tone of painful disappointment. "I really believed old friendship had done it; but, nevertheless, of course, I am at your command. What weapons does the challenge demand?"
"Pistols!"