"Certainly, if I can."
"Well then," said Ottilie with a deep blush, "tell me how the duel chanced to take place, for I will confess that one said one thing, and another another, and at last we found out that nobody knew. Will you?"
"Very willingly," said Gotthold.
He had noticed Herr Wollnow's repeated attempts to give the conversation another turn, and thought he could perceive that his host's former remarks had not been so entirely unpremeditated as they had at first seemed. Had Frau Wollnow told her husband a romance to suit her own fancy, and made him play Heaven knows what ridiculous part? He must try to put an end to such rumors, and believed that the very best way of doing so would be to fulfil Frau Wollnow's wish, and tell the story with the utmost possible frankness, as if it concerned a third person.
These thoughts passed rapidly through his mind as he slowly raised the glass of wine to his lips. He sipped a little of it, and then said, turning to Frau Wollnow with a smile:--
"How gladly, honored lady, would I begin my story with the words of Schiller: 'Oh! queen, you wake the unspeakably torturing smart of the old wound, but it won't do, it won't do. True, when there is any sudden change of weather I have a twinge in the wound, but it is by no means unspeakably painful; and at all events at this moment I feel nothing at all, except the profound truth of the old saying, that young people will be young people, and will play youthful pranks, oftentimes very foolish ones. To this latter category undoubtedly belongs my combat with Carl Brandow, which did not, however, as you suppose, originate in the dancing lessons, but was only brought to a decisive issue there, after it had long been glowing under the ashes, and even threatened once before to break out into light flames. The first cause was this. In our fifth form it was an old custom, most sacredly observed, that an open space should be reserved between the first bench and the lecturer's chair for the 'old boys,' which no 'new boy' was permitted to enter before the close of the first term, on pain of a severe thrashing. Carl Brandow, it is true, belonged to the 'old boys,' indeed the very old boys; for he had been in the fifth form three years, but was still on the last bench, although if I remember rightly, he had already passed his eighteenth birthday. I was one of the 'new boys,' one of the latest comers indeed; for I had just entered at Michaelmas, a lad of fourteen, to the no small annoyance of my father, who had prepared me himself, and expected I should be at once enrolled among the first classes. It was not without reason, for when at the end of the first week, according to custom, the rank of the different scholars was assigned from the result of certain exercises we called extemporalia, mine proved to be without fault, and I was transferred to my well-earned dignity of Primus omnium with a certain degree of ceremony. And yet I was not even now to be permitted to cross the space before the first bench! From the first moment I had felt this prohibition as an outrage; now I openly declared it to be one, and said that I would never submit to it, but on the contrary demanded the abolition of the brutal rule, not only for myself but all the new boys, whose champion I considered myself.
"In thus wording my demand I had really been guided only by my own intuitive sense of justice, without being actuated by any other motive; but the result proved that I could not have done better if I had been the most crafty demagogue. Standing alone, I should have had no chance of accomplishing my bold innovation; but now my cause was the cause of all, that is of all the 'new boys,' and chance willed that our numbers were exactly the same as those of the other party. Even in regard to bodily strength, which boys so well know how to rate according to age, we might probably have compared tolerably with them, and the little that was wanting would have been well supplied by the enthusiasm for the good cause which I unceasingly labored to arouse--if it had not been for Carl Brandow. Who could withstand this eighteen-years-old hero, slender and strong as a young pine? He would rage among us like Achilles among the Trojans, and strew the field--a retired open space in a little wood behind the school-house--with the bodies of the enemies he had hurled to the ground; for it was agreed that whoever in struggling should touch the earth with his back was to be considered conquered, and desist from the battle, which was to be decided in this manner before the eyes of six honorable members of the first class, who accepted the office of umpires with a readiness deserving of acknowledgment.
"Yet there was no retreat, even if we, which was not the case, had thought of making one. The hour arrived--one Saturday afternoon, on which we had contrived to evade the watchfulness of the teacher--and I do not believe that soldiers ordered to assault a battery vomiting death and destruction can feel more solemn and earnest than did we. I may say, especially I. I had caused the struggle; I had involved all the brave boys in it; I felt responsible for the result, and for the disgrace in case of defeat--an event which seemed more probable every moment. That I was determined to do my utmost and strain every nerve is a matter of course. I hoped and prayed the gods that Carl Brandow might fall to me--for the antagonists were to be drawn by lot, and only he who had conquered his opponent was permitted to choose from among those who had vanquished theirs until all was decided. I do not remember whether the senior boys, who devised these ingenious rules, had copied from Sir Walter Scott; I only know I have never read the famous description of the tournament at Ashby, in Ivanhoe, without being reminded of that Saturday afternoon--the shady forest glade, and the boyish faces glowing with courage and ardor for the combat.
"And, as in the tournament of Ashby, a wholly unforeseen accident in the person of the Black Knight, the Noir Fainéant, saved the hero's otherwise hopelessly lost cause, so it was here.
"Among the new boys was a lad of sixteen, with a frank honest face, which would have been handsome if it had possessed a little more animation, and the large earnest blue eyes had been a shade less dreamy. Although not tall, he was powerfully built, and we should perhaps have reckoned upon his assistance had not his indolence seemed to us to be very much greater than the strength he might possess, for he had never given any proof of it; and in reply to our eager questions about how he rated himself, merely shrugged his broad shoulders in silence."