A Tramp Abroad - The Original Classic Edition. Twain Mark

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       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

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       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

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       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" then. We had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. It transpired that this

       signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision

       was reached--duels in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn battles do not count. [1] After a student has received his ribbon, he

       is "free"; he can cease from fighting, without reproach--except some one

       insult him; his president cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer

       if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. Statistics

       show that he does NOT prefer to remain quiescent. They show that the duel has a singular fascination about it somewhere, for these free

       men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering. A corps student told me it was of record that Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given

       him the right to retire from the field.

       1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar, in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-groups of the Five

       Corps; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and were

       pictured in lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty years

       ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. In one

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       portrait-group representing (as each of these pictures did) an entire Corps, I took pains to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven members, and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge.

       The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars. Two days in every week are devoted to dueling. The rule is rigid that there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally more, but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day I was present; sometimes there are seven or eight. It is insisted that eight duels a

       week--four for each of the two days--is too low an average to draw a calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case. This requires about four

       hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year--for in summer the

       college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four months and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty students in the university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belonged to the

       five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionally

       other students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps in

       order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day.

       [2] Consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred

       and fifty duels a year. This average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty. This large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer.

       2. They have to borrow the arms because they could not get them elsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it, the public authorities, all

       over Germany, allow the five Corps to keep swords, but DO NOT ALLOW THEM

       TO USE THEM. This is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that is lax.

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       Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point

       to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is СКАЧАТЬ