CHAPTER VII [How Bismark Fought]

In addition to the corps laws, there are some corps usages which have the force of laws.

Perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the membership who is no longer an exempt—­that is a freshman —­has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president, instead of calling for volunteers, will appoint this sophomore to measure swords with a student of another corps; he is free to decline—­everybody says so—­there is no compulsion.  This is all true—­but I have not heard of any student who did decline; to decline and still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, since he knew, when he joined, that his main business, as a member, would be to fight.  No, there is no law against declining—­except the law of custom, which is confessedly stronger than written law, everywhere.

The ten men whose duels I had witnessed did not go away when their hurts were dressed, as I had supposed they would, but came back, one after another, as soon as they were free of the surgeon, and mingled with the assemblage in the dueling-room.  The white-cap student who won the second fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during the intermissions.  He could not talk very well, because his opponent’s sword had cut his under-lip in two, and then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could he eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing.  The man who was the worst hurt of all played chess while waiting to see this engagement.  A good part of his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them.  It is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in other public places in this kind of array, and that this predilection often keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him.  Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public gardens of Heidelberg.  It is also said that the student is glad to get wounds in the face, because the scars they leave will show so well there; and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible.  It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted and maintained, nevertheless; I am sure of one thing—­scars are plenty enough in Germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are, too.  They crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffaceable.  Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect; and the effect is striking when several such accent the milder ones, which form a city map on a man’s face; they suggest the “burned district”