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.