and which he had not felt in reality even in the midst of battle.  But yet this bold playing with death had, toward the last, lost a little of its charm, and a moment arrived when his courage failed him, and his daring spirit was overpowered by his awed physical nature.  There was not, as there is in battle, the excitement which conquers the fear of death, and drunk with victory, mocks one to his face; there was not the wild delight which possesses the soldier in the midst of a shower of balls, and makes him, as it were, rush toward eternity with a shout.  No, indeed!  It was something quite different which Colonel von Brenda, otherwise so brave and valiant, now felt.

When the Austrian soldiers had pronounced his sentence of death, when they formed a ring around him at the Gens-d’Armes Market, and loaded their pieces for his execution, then the haughty Russian colonel felt a sudden change take place; his blood curdled in his veins, and he felt as if thousands of small worms were creeping through them, gliding slowly, horribly to his heart.  At length, in the very despair which oppressed him, he found strength to cast his incubus from his breast, and with a voice loud and powerful as thunder to cry out for help and succor.  His voice was heard; it reached the ear of General Bachmann, who came in person to set free the wild young officer, the favorite of his empress, from the hands of the Austrians.

This adventure, which had terminated so famously, Count Brenda now related to his friends and comrades.  To be sure, the general had punished the mad freak with an arrest of four-and-twenty hours.  But after undergoing this punishment, he was more than ever the hero of the day, the idol of his comrades, who now celebrated his release from arrest with loud rejoicing and the cracking of champagne bottles.  After they had laughed and joked to their satisfaction, they resorted to the dice.

“And what stake shall we play for?” asked Feodor, as he cast a look of ill-concealed contempt on his young companions, who so little understood the art of drinking the cup of pleasure with decency, and rolled about on their seats with lolling tongues and leering eyes.

Feodor alone had preserved the power of his mind; his brain alone was unclouded by the fumes of champagne, and that which had made the others mad had only served to make him sad and gloomy.  The drunkenness of his comrades had sobered him, and, feeling satiated with all the so-called joys and delights of life, he asked himself, with a smile of contempt, whether the stammering, staggering fellows, who sat next to him, were fit and suitable companions and associates of a man who had made pleasure a study, and who considered enjoyment as a philosophical problem, difficult of solution.

“And for what stake shall we play?” he asked again, as with a powerful grip he woke his neighbor, Lieutenant von Matusch, out of the half sleep which had crept over him.