of his manoevres —­ an attachment of the ludicrous to his own character and person.  Continually enveloped in an atmosphere of whim, my friend appeared to live only for the severities of society; and not even his own household have for a moment associated other ideas than those of the rigid and august with the memory of the Baron Ritzner von Jung. the demon of the dolce far niente lay like an incubus upon the university.  Nothing, at least, was done beyond eating and drinking and making merry.  The apartments of the students were converted into so many pot-houses, and there was no pot-house of them all more famous or more frequented than that of the Baron.  Our carousals here were many, and boisterous, and long, and never unfruitful of events.

Upon one occasion we had protracted our sitting until nearly daybreak, and an unusual quantity of wine had been drunk.  The company consisted of seven or eight individuals besides the Baron and myself.  Most of these were young men of wealth, of high connection, of great family pride, and all alive with an exaggerated sense of honor.  They abounded in the most ultra German opinions respecting the duello.  To these Quixotic notions some recent Parisian publications, backed by three or four desperate and fatal conversation, during the greater part of the night, had run wild upon the all —­ engrossing topic of the times.  The Baron, who had been unusually silent and abstracted in the earlier portion of the evening, at length seemed to be aroused from his apathy, took a leading part in the discourse, and dwelt upon the benefits, and more especially upon the beauties, of the received code of etiquette in passages of arms with an ardor, an eloquence, an impressiveness, and an affectionateness of manner, which elicited the warmest enthusiasm from his hearers in general, and absolutely staggered even myself, who well knew him to be at heart a ridiculer of those very points for which he contended, and especially to hold the entire fanfaronade of duelling etiquette in the sovereign contempt which it deserves.

Looking around me during a pause in the Baron’s discourse (of which my readers may gather some faint idea when I say that it bore resemblance to the fervid, chanting, monotonous, yet musical sermonic manner of Coleridge), I perceived symptoms of even more than the general interest in the countenance of one of the party.  This gentleman, whom I shall call Hermann, was an original in every respect —­ except, perhaps, in the single particular that he was a very great fool.  He contrived to bear, however, among a particular set at the university, a reputation for deep metaphysical thinking, and, I believe, for some logical talent.  As a duellist he had acquired who had fallen at his hands; but they were many.  He was a man of courage undoubtedly.  But it was upon his minute acquaintance with the etiquette of the duello, and the nicety of his sense of honor, that he most especially prided himself.  These things were a hobby which he rode to the death.  To Ritzner, ever upon the lookout for the grotesque, his peculiarities had for a long time past afforded food for mystification.  Of this, however, I was not aware; although, in the present instance, I saw clearly that something of a whimsical nature was upon the tapis with my friend, and that Hermann was its especial object.