But it was poor Major Kahle who would suffer most of all. After attaining at last the goal of his desires, all his aspirations were to be nipped in the bud by the misdemeanor of his wife. He had no idea where she was now; she had preferred not to venture near him in leaving the garrison, since she did not feel sure of a cordial reception on his part. Hence she had sent her little son to her parents, while she herself had taken up quarters in Berlin. Her chief amusement just now consisted in the inditing of innumerable letters to Kolberg, full of reproaches for “having succeeded by his diabolical arts in alienating her affections from her husband,” while the leisure she could spare from these epistolary efforts was devoted to roaming that broad international thoroughfare, Unter den Linden, which presented to her, after her long “exile” close to the frontier, a striking and highly appreciated contrast. Kahle was firmly resolved to show the door to his faithless wife if she should dare present herself before him; meanwhile he took preliminary steps to obtain a legal separation from her. But there was another thought heavy on his mind. It was the unavoidable duel. Because his wife had deceived him, the army code forced him to next expose himself to the bullet of her seducer, instead of simply expelling the latter from the army and giving him a much-needed period of reflection in jail. He was expected to “save the honor of his wife” by mortal combat. What an absurdity! he thought to himself. Is there any honor left in a wife who deceives her husband? A coquette she was, heartless and honorless, nothing more, and yet he must risk his life in defence of a thing which did not exist any longer, and which, he now strongly suspected, had from the first been nothing but a delusion on his part--her honor! What a ludicrous farce! And he began to reflect whether there was not some way in which he could escape this impending duel. Not because he was a coward or afraid of death; no, he was brave enough, but he could not see why he should expose to blind chance not only the fruits of his own arduous life, but also the future of his son, merely because another man had acted in a despicable manner. It was quite possible that his adversary might kill him in this duel. In that case he, the innocent party, would suffer the supreme penalty which man can suffer,--death,--and the criminal himself would go off scot-free.