Read "The Breaking of the Storm" by Friedrich Spielhagen online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The two men stood opposite one another, each measuring the other's strength, like two athletes who are about to fight to the death, and yet cannot resist admiring each other's noble appearance, and thinking that whichever falls will have succumbed to a worthy adversary. And yet the General had all the time the sensation that, strong and powerful as was the man who stood before him, he himself was in that moment the more composed, the calmer, and therefore the stronger. He saw it in the sullen fire that smouldered in the man's eyes, in the trembling of the hand with which he pointed to a chair; he heard it in the deep voice which now said: "I did not expect your visit, General; but it does not surprise me."
"I conjectured as much," answered the General; "and it is for that reason that you see me here. I thought that every hour which passed unused by us, would diminish the probability of a friendly arrangement of the affair which brings me to you, as it would leave time for the miserable writer of this letter to spread his poison further and further. May I venture to give you the disagreeable task of reading this document?"