Wow, this is indeed VERY DRAMATIC! We are indebted to you, O Detective, for providing us with the DRAMA! (Puts the drama in my life in perspective, lol. No one has, to the best of my knowledge, started hitting someone randomly in what their boss describes as a "state of insanity.")
I'm glad you provided the translation, because while it's reasonable enough French that my French is sufficient to be able to translate it, I would have been like, "uhhhh I must be missing someting?" Because this man spoke to me?? Is this an idiom for "insult" that I don't know about?
I meant to add, one possible way to reconcile the accounts is that after the two men entered the room together, Chevalier Fresia said something that Karl took offense to (and overreacted to), something he could later point to when writing to Fritz about how honor totally required him to do what he did!
That's what I had assumed before reading the above, but that just seems weird. It would be interesting to see if anyone knew what Keith said Fresia said, if anything. From Poyntz's account it sounds like everyone thinks it's just bizarre! Which it is!
I'm glad you provided the translation, because while it's reasonable enough French that my French is sufficient to be able to translate it, I would have been like, "uhhhh I must be missing someting?" Because this man spoke to me?? Is this an idiom for "insult" that I don't know about?
Yeah, I had to read it more than once to make sure I wasn't missing something! It does run over the end of a page, and the margin is slightly cut off, so it's possible some very short word is missing? Because I would expect "because of the way this man spoke to me" or "because this man spoke to me evilly" or something.
But I also don't see what could fit into the margin that would make grammatical and semantic sense here. I gave you what I see on the page and did my best to make sense of it!
Also, for what it's worth, the reason I put "[have]" at the end of Fritz's quote is that the French makes even less sense, and must be missing something! So it's also possible Poyntz just made a mistake when switching from the end of one line to the beginning of the next...we saw something like that (or at least that's what I think is going on) in the Fredersdorf letters, where Selena confirmed it makes no sense as stands.
I think sometimes people have memory lapses when they get to the end of a line on a page and have to pause to transition to the beginning of the next line at the far opposite side of the page.
It would be interesting to see if anyone knew what Keith said Fresia said, if anything.
Yeah, I started looking into the Austrian archives today. :P They're quite a bit more expensive than the German ones, but not as bad as the French, so maybe I can make something work out just this once. For such a DRAMATIC cause, you know. ;)
I also started checking out the British archives just now to see if I could find the extra detailed account Poyntz mentions, but of course the online catalogue is down.
Also, I told my wife this story when we chatted today, about how the story going around in Italy has a poor Italian guy lying helpless on the ground while some Prussian madman attacks him for no reason at all, and she was like, "Suuuurrre." She's with me on the possible bias of the account here. ;)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: A duel for science...or insanity??
Date: 2025-06-01 02:41 am (UTC)"Monsieur, I beg your pardon for what has just happened in your house, but I could not do otherwise, because this man spoke to me" / ["Monsieur, je vous demande pardon de ce qui vient de passer dans votre maison, mais je ne pouvois pas faire autrement, car cet homme m'a parlé."]
I'm glad you provided the translation, because while it's reasonable enough French that my French is sufficient to be able to translate it, I would have been like, "uhhhh I must be missing someting?" Because this man spoke to me?? Is this an idiom for "insult" that I don't know about?
I meant to add, one possible way to reconcile the accounts is that after the two men entered the room together, Chevalier Fresia said something that Karl took offense to (and overreacted to), something he could later point to when writing to Fritz about how honor totally required him to do what he did!
That's what I had assumed before reading the above, but that just seems weird. It would be interesting to see if anyone knew what Keith said Fresia said, if anything. From Poyntz's account it sounds like everyone thinks it's just bizarre! Which it is!
Re: A duel for science...or insanity??
Date: 2025-06-01 02:55 am (UTC)I'm glad you provided the translation, because while it's reasonable enough French that my French is sufficient to be able to translate it, I would have been like, "uhhhh I must be missing someting?" Because this man spoke to me?? Is this an idiom for "insult" that I don't know about?
Yeah, I had to read it more than once to make sure I wasn't missing something! It does run over the end of a page, and the margin is slightly cut off, so it's possible some very short word is missing? Because I would expect "because of the way this man spoke to me" or "because this man spoke to me evilly" or something.
But I also don't see what could fit into the margin that would make grammatical and semantic sense here. I gave you what I see on the page and did my best to make sense of it!
Also, for what it's worth, the reason I put "[have]" at the end of Fritz's quote is that the French makes even less sense, and must be missing something! So it's also possible Poyntz just made a mistake when switching from the end of one line to the beginning of the next...we saw something like that (or at least that's what I think is going on) in the Fredersdorf letters, where Selena confirmed it makes no sense as stands.
I think sometimes people have memory lapses when they get to the end of a line on a page and have to pause to transition to the beginning of the next line at the far opposite side of the page.
It would be interesting to see if anyone knew what Keith said Fresia said, if anything.
Yeah, I started looking into the Austrian archives today. :P They're quite a bit more expensive than the German ones, but not as bad as the French, so maybe I can make something work out just this once. For such a DRAMATIC cause, you know. ;)
I also started checking out the British archives just now to see if I could find the extra detailed account Poyntz mentions, but of course the online catalogue is down.
Also, I told my wife this story when we chatted today, about how the story going around in Italy has a poor Italian guy lying helpless on the ground while some Prussian madman attacks him for no reason at all, and she was like, "Suuuurrre." She's with me on the possible bias of the account here. ;)
Re: A duel for science...or insanity??
Date: 2025-06-01 03:10 am (UTC)We are indebted to you, O Detective, for providing us with the DRAMA!
I am pleased that my efforts to track down an elusive account of this duel have been so well received by salon. *glowing*