It was certainly odd; the very woman whom every one else seemed to distrust appeared to him more worthy of esteem than any of the others. He realised this only after the visit just paid. To her alone had he answered frankly, and although they had hardly exchanged a dozen words, he felt they under-stood each other perfectly. He could not avoid the thought that their souls were akin. Each of them yearned after what was great and beautiful in life. This woman, indeed, deserved pity, for she had suffered shipwreck in the greatest and noblest end for which woman is created--in her love; but he, thank God, was a man; and his ideal, Germany, still stood out clear and definite, dwarfing mere personal aims.
In that dim room a sinister thought had seized upon him, oppressing and paralysing him; a vague foreboding that his fate would resemble that of this pale woman. But he chased the dark clouds away. His star did not vary in its light as does the shifting and drifting human mind; it was like the sun, steady, unchangeable, inspiring.
CHAPTER IV
"For oh! I had a comrade,
And a better could not be."
(Uhland.)
During the first days of December Corporal Wiegandt would sometimes observe, in a pause of the drill, that the recruits were beginning to look a little like soldiers; and in the bar-rack-room, after drill was over, he occasionally even went so far as to give them some praise.
When he was getting ready to go out in the evening, and, with sabre buckled on and forage-cap stuck jauntily on his head, brushed his moustache before the little looking-glass, he would say: "Boys, I am almost pleased with you to-day. I shall tell my Frieda."
Whereupon the recruits would laugh, as in duty bound. They might all hate the corporal; he would not dispense with a fraction of their drill, and did not express himself in a complimentary way during the exercises; but he made things easy for them as far as possible, changing about from difficult to less difficult movements, and giving them long intervals between those that were the most exacting. His division never had to stand for minutes together with their knees bent, like Heppner's. Moreover, despite his roughness, there was about him a certain kind-heartedness which took the form of good-natured little extra lessons to the least efficient after drill.
His Frieda was a merry industrious girl who sewed muslin in a frilling factory, and hoarded up the groschen she earned in order to save enough money to be married some day.
And Wiegandt, who, despite his martial appearance, was an ardent lover, added the pfennigs of his pay, and deprived himself of his evening beer, going for walks with his sweet-heart instead, and kissing her over and over again.