“A bottle of Mumm, sec!”
Thus these two celebrated the event of their flight.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] “Commiss-fortune”—the term applied to the dowry of an officer’s wife, which must reach a certain figure.—Tr.
Chapter VIII
CHANGES IN THE GARRISON
The flight of First Lieutenant Borgert could not long remain a secret.
When he did not return at the expiration of his short leave, and a telegraphic query brought the answer from his father that he had not seen him, the assumption began to take shape that he had tried to escape the consequences of his misdoings by deserting.
It is true that no one aside from Leimann had known precisely his bad financial status. But when the Jewish dealer came to claim the furniture sold him, and at the same time the bailiff arrived with the intention of seizing the very same objects on the strength of a new process of attachment begun in court, the catastrophe could no longer be hidden from the world. Everybody then began to see, detail after detail, the whole system of fraud erected by Borgert, with the passive connivance of his friend Leimann.
The court ordered that the entire property of the deserter be placed in legal custody. A term was fixed when the horde of creditors whom he had so shamefully deceived were to be adjudged pro-rata shares of the whole. Advertisements were inserted in the papers, calling upon all those having claims against the estate of the defaulter to come forward. Hundreds of bills came by mail from all the cities and towns, and even from the villages surrounding the little garrison, and the amounts in their totality figured up to a considerable sum.