Dr. von Fröben continued: "But you must not think, Reimers, that in such matters I am a bigoted moralist. Ideas of morality are subject to just the same fluctuations as----"
And he dealt out what remained in his memory of a newspaper article, the writer of which had entirely misunderstood Nietsche.
After the toast of "The King," a momentary silence fell upon the company, contrasting strangely with the clatter of voices which had preceded it.
During this lull in the conversation the word "China" was spoken somewhere near the colonel, and all eyes involuntarily turned to Madelung.
He sat there stiffly with his cold face, a cynical smile on his thin lips. "Dangers!" he cried in his hard voice, which had the shrillness of a musical instrument that has lost its resonance, "Dangers! I knew nothing about them."
He laughed drily.
Captain Heuschkel, who was always worrying about his fat horses, inquired: "Well, against such an opponent, surely cover had to be considered most of all. Wasn't it so? that cover was of more importance than action? Ten thousand of those yellow fellows were not worth a single trained soldier, surely?"
"Or one of my horses," he added in his own mind. He would probably have committed suicide if he had seen one of his horses shot by a dirty Chinaman.
"Surely it was a question of good cover, wasn't it?" he insisted.
"No," answered Madelung in a loud voice. "It was a question of keeping your fingers out of your mouth."