The German Lieutenant, and Other Stories

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The German Lieutenant and Other Stories, by August Strindberg, Translated by Claud Field
August Strindberg. Born at Stockholm, January 22, 1849; died there, May 14, 1912. A Swedish dramatist and novelist, a leader of modern Swedish literature. Among his plays are Master Olof (1872), Gilletshemlighet (1880), Fadren (1887), Froken Julie (1888), Glaubiger (1889), Till Damaskus (1808), and a series of historical dramas including Gustavas Wasa, Erik XIV., Gustavas Adolphus, and Carol XII. He wrote also Roda rummet (1879), Det nya riket (1882), which provoked so much criticism that the author left Sweden for a number of years; Svenska folket HELG OCH SOKEN (1882), GIFTAS (1884), DIE BEICHTE EINES THOREN (1893), INFERNO (1897), written after one of his periodical attacks of insanity; EINSAM (1903), an autobiographical novel; DIE GOTISCHEN ZIMMER (1904), and many other volumes. He has been called the Shakspere of Sweden. — The Century Cyclopædia of Names .
It was fourteen days after Sedan, in the middle of September, 1870. A former clerk in the Prussian Geological Survey, later a lieutenant in the reserve, named Von Bleichroden, sat in his shirt-sleeves before a writing-table in the Café du Cercle, the best inn of the little town Marlotte. He had thrown his military coat with its stiff collar over the back of a chair, and there it hung limp, and collapsed like a corpse, with its empty arms seeming to clutch at the legs of the chair to keep itself from falling headlong. Round the body of the coat one saw the mark of the sword-belt, and the left coat-tail was rubbed quite smooth by the sheath. The back of the coat was as dusty as a high-road, and the lieutenant-geologist might have studied the tertiary deposits of the district on the edges of his much-worn trousers. When the orderlies came into the room with their dirty boots, he could till by the traces they left on the floor whether they had been walking over Eocene or Pleiocene formations. He was really more a geologist than a soldier, but for the present he was a letter-writer. He had pushed his spectacles up to his forehead, sat with his pen at rest, and looked out of the window.