Page:The Necromancer, or, The Tale of the Black Forest Vol. 1.djvu/153

 forcibly to disregard the earnest prohibition of his general.

A friend of mine happened to fall out with a foreign officer, who had been visiting his parents, the foreigner challenged my friend, who most readily consented to decide the quarrel by the sword. Business of the greatest consequence obliged the foreigner to depart in the night preceding the morning on which the duel was to be fought—he wrote a note to my friend, promising upon his honor to appear at the appointed place on the ninth day, and my brother officer consented to the delay.

I and a few more officers of our regiment paid a visit to my friend who had been challenged, two days before the duel was to be fought; we were in high spirits, played, eat and drank amid the cheerful laughter of merriment, not recollecting, that after three days our host, perhaps, might be no more: He himself appeared to have entirely forgotten