Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

The death of the young man excited universal sympathy. He was mourned not only by his relatives and friends, but by all his dependants, the peasants on his estates, nay, even by strangers to whom he had only been pointed out as he passed by. And on the day when he was buried, with all the honours befitting the noble name which he had borne so worthily, there was in the whole country round no little child whose hands were not folded in prayer for him, no poor labouring woman who had ever met him in the road, and whose existence his kindly smile had helped to lighten, who did not wear a black apron or a black kerchief, in loving memory of him. No one, perhaps, could have told what he or she had expected of the young Count, but all felt that with him some hope had died, some sunshine had been buried.

Fritz Malzin, the only witness of the insult offered to the Conte, died the night before the duel; nothing therefore was known save what the Conte chose to tell; the versions of the reasons that had induced Oswald's rash acceptance of the Conte's challenge were many and widely differing, but not one of them bore the least relation to the truth.