'Draw the social chair yet closer;
Vow by this full draught of mirth,
That all evil is forgiven,
Hell is banished from our earth.'
It was Schiller's beautiful 'Song of Joy' they were singing to the clanking accompaniment of their cans and wooden shoes. How happy those humble fellows seemed; and how much he envied them!
But Charlie was roused from his reverie by the Oberkellner announcing—
'Der Graf von Frankenburg.'
'Which?' asked Charlie, starting; 'Count Ulrich?'
'No, mein Herr—Count Heinrich.'
'Very good—show him up.'
Charlie would rather that the old father of Ernestine had come than her brother, whose errand would no doubt be a hostile one. That Heinrich, his friend and comrade, came on such an errand seemed horrible and unnatural. The wild justice of the pistol, as some one has named it, was ceasing to be appreciated even in Germany. The time had gone past when the pistols of skilled homicides were notched as registers of the lives they had taken, or had cards attached to them, with the names of the slain, the date and the place of meeting, and the distance of fighting, all neatly written thereon.
Let Heinrich taunt him how he would, a duel must not take place. 'In the battle-field,' thought Charlie, 'I shall cheerfully meet death, front to front and face to face; but I shall not carry there the mark of Cain, by perhaps shooting the brother of her I love—my brother in the spirit.'
Charlie forgot that in the Heilinghaist-feld at Altona he had fought a duel for that brother, and winged an officer of the King's Grenadiers; and he was just remembering that if hostilities were contemplated, a messenger would have been sent by Heinrich, when the latter entered the room, and coming quickly forward to Charlie, grasped both his hands with his usual frankness.