"So Hellmuth went to the end of the Bridge, and, turning with his corps-brothers to back him, he pushed the second time against your Herr, and stepped back so that all might laugh as he took off his cap to mock the Englishman's bow and curious way of saying 'Pardon!' "But the Englander took him momently by the collar, and by some art of the light hand turned him over his foot into the gutter, which ran brimming full of half-melted snow. The light was bright, for, as I tell you, it was underneath the lamps at the bridge-end. The moon also happened to come out from behind a wrack of cloud, and all the men on the bridge saw--and the girls with them also--so that you could hear the laughing at the Molkenkur, till the burghers put their red night-caps out of their windows to know what had happened to the wild Kerls of the _cafés_." "But surely that is no cause for a challenge, Excellenz?" said I. "How can an officer of the Kaiser bring such a challenge?" "Ach!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "is not a fight a fight, cause or no cause? Moreover, is not Hellmuth after all the son of my mother's sister, though but a Rhineland donkey, and void of sense?" So I showed him up to the room of the English Herr, and went away again, though not so far but that I could hear their voices. It was the officer whom I heard speaking first. He spoke loudly, and as I say, having been of the Intelligence Department, I did not go too far away. "You have my friend insulted, and you must immediately satisfaction make!" said the young Officier. "That will I gladly do, if your friend will deign to come up here. There are more ways of fighting than getting into a feather-bed and cutting at the corners." So our young Englander spoke, with his high voice, piping and clipping his words as all the English do. "Sir," said the officer, with some heat, "I bring you a cartel, and I am an officer of the Kaiser. What is your answer?" "Then, Herr Hauptmann," said the Englishman, "since you are a soldier, you and I know what fighting is, and that snipping and snicking at noses is no fighting. Tell your friend to come up here and have a turn with the two-ounce gloves, and I shall be happy to give him all the satisfaction he wants. Otherwise I will only fight him with pistols, and to the death also. If he will not fight in my way, I shall beat him with a cane for having insulted me, whenever I meet him." With that the officer came down to me, and he said, "It is as you thought. The Englishman will not fight with the Schläger, but he has more steel in his veins than a dozen of Hellmuths. Thunderweather, I shall fight Hellmuth myself to-morrow morning, if it be that he burns so greatly to be led away. Once before I gave him a scar of heavenly beauty!"