We all congratulated ourselves on seeing Heidelberg while the University was in session, and we could observe the large fat students in flat blue and pink and green club caps, swaggering about the town accompanied by dogs of almost equal importance.  The largest and fattest, I thought, wore white caps, and, though Mr. Jarvis Portheris said that white was the most aristocratic club’s colour, they looked remarkably like bakers.  The Senator had an object in Heidelberg, as he had in so many places, and that object was to investigate the practice of duelling, which everybody understands to prevail to a deadly extent among the students.  It was plain from their appearance that personal assault at all events was regrettably common, for nearly everyone of them wore traces of it in their faces, wore them as if they were particularly becoming.  Every variety of scar that could well be imagined was represented, some healed, some healing, and some freshly gory.  The youth with the most scars, we observed, gave himself the most airs, and the really vainglorious were, more or less, obscured in cotton-wool, evidently just from the hands of the surgeon.  The Senator examined them individually as they passed, with an inquisitiveness which they plainly enjoyed, and was much impressed with their fighting qualities as a race, until Mr. Jarvis Portheris happened to explain that the scars were very carefully given and received with an almost exclusive view to personal adornment.  Mr. Mafferton appeared to have known this before; but that was an irritating way he had—­none of the rest of us did.  The Senator regarded the next youth he met, who had elongated his mouth to run up into his ear without adding in the least to his charms of appearance, with barely disguised contempt, and when Mr. Jarvis Portheris proceeded to explain how the doctors pulled open the cuts if they promised to heal without leaving any sign of valour, poppa’s impatience with the noble army of duellists grew so great that he could hardly remain in Heidelberg till the train was ready to take him away.

“But don’t they ever by accident do themselves any harm?” inquired my disappointed parent.

“There’s one case on record,” said Mr. Jarvis Portheris, “and everybody here says it’s true.  One fellow that was fighting happened to have a dog, and the dog was allowed in.  Well, the other fellow, by accident, sliced off the end of the fellow that had the dog’s nose—­I don’t mean the dog’s nose, you know, but the fellow’s.  That was going a bit far, you know; they don’t generally go so far.  Well, the doctor said that would be all right, they could easily make it grow on again; but when they looked for the nose—­the dog had eaten it! They never allow dogs in now.”

It was a simple little story, and it bore marks of unmistakable age and many aliases, but it did much to reconcile the Senator to the University student of Heidelberg, and especially to his dog.