“So your business is doing badly?”
“Mine only? No, almost all, your ladyship,” answered the bookseller. “Except the providers for the army there are no tradesmen to whom the war has not brought untold loss. Everything is at a standstill; work in the factories; work in the fields; men without number are without places and without bread. Our paper is falling; the exchange rising; all desire for enterprise is decaying; many firms must go bankrupt—in short, it is a misery! a misery!”
“And there is my father wishing——” I repeated in silence as I left the shop.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My friend was at home.
Countess Lori Griesbach was in more than one respect the sharer of my lot. A general’s daughter, like me—married for only a short time to an officer, like me—and, like me, a “grass widow”. In one thing she went beyond me: she had not only a husband, but two brothers also at the war. But Lori was not of an apprehensive nature; she was fully persuaded that her dear ones were under the peculiar protection of a saint whom she highly venerated, and she counted confidently on their return.
She received me with open arms.
“Ah! God bless you, Martha; it is indeed good of you to come and see me. But how pale and worn you are looking; you have not had any bad news from the seat of war?”
“No, thank God! But the whole thing is so sad.”
“Ah, yes! You mean the defeat. But you must not think too much of that, the next news may announce a victory.”