I was seated in an arbour with a young Russian officer named Paulovitch Count Volhonski, who was travelling like myself, and whom I had met at the table-d'hôte of the Rolandsburg, in the Breitestrasse. As an Englishman, apt at all times to undervalue the Russian character, I was agreeably surprised to find that this young captain of the Imperial Guard could speak several European, and at least two of the dead, languages with equal facility. He was a good musician, sang well, and was moreover remarkably handsome, though his keen dark eyes and strongly marked brows, with a most decided aquiline nose, required all the softness that a mouth well curved and as delicately cut as that of a woman could be, to relieve them, and something of pride and hauteur, if not of sternness, that formed the normal expression of his face. His complexion was remarkably pure and clear, his hair was dark and shorn very short, and he had a handsome moustache, well pointed up. We had frequented several places of amusement together, and had agreed to travel in company so far as Berlin, and this was to be our last night in Altona. The waiter had barely placed our wine upon the table and poured it out, when there entered our arbour, and seated himself uninvited beside us, a great burly German officer in undress uniform, and who in a stentorian voice ordered a bottle of lager-beer, and lighting his huge meerschaum without a word or glance of courtesy or apology, surveyed us boldly with a cool defiant stare. This was so offensive, that Volhonski's usually pale face flushed crimson, and we instinctively looked at each other inquiringly. The German next lay back in his seat, coughed loudly, expectorated in all directions in that abominable manner peculiar to his country, placed his heavy military boots with a thundering crash upon two vacant chairs, drank his beer, and threw down the metal flagon roughly on the table, eyeing us from time to time with a sneering glance that was alike insulting and unwarrantable. But this man, whom we afterwards learned to be a noted bully and duellist, Captain Ludwig Schwartz, of the Prussian 95th or Thuringians, evidently wished to provoke a quarrel with either or both of us, as some Prussian officers and Hamburg girls, who were watching his proceedings from an alley of the garden, seemed to think, and to enjoy the situation. But for their presence and mocking bearing, Volhonski and I would probably, for the sake of peace, have retired and gone elsewhere; however, their laughter and remarks rendered the intrusive insolence of their friend the more intolerable. It chanced that a little puff of wind blew the ashes of Volhonski's cigar all over the face and big brown beard of the German, who, while eyeing him fiercely, slowly extricated the pipe from his heavy dense moustache, and striking his clenched hand on the table so as to make everything thereon dance, he said, imperiously, "The Herr Graf will apologise?"