Meyer's gentle gift of rudeness pierced his thick skin with inflaming venom. A sense of discipline and the presence of the enemy alone restrained him from violence. In despair he turned to his Sovereign.
"Have I your permission to head a charge against the guns, sire?" he asked.
But Karl's face had taken on a new look of decision.
"You have not," he replied firmly. "Any fool can head a charge. I suggested doing so myself half an hour ago. In theory I am a King and you a General; in practice we are pawns in Meyer's game. It is wisest to accept our limitations, and only to move when and where we are told. If I can submit, Von Bilderbaum, surely you can, too."
"Your Majesty's words are very touching," said Meyer in his colourless tones, which might have concealed the profoundest contempt or the most genuine feeling. "This is the hour of the savant, of the professor of 'Kriegspiel,' of the man whose brain is unaffected by the glamour of heroism or the poetry of shock tactics. The hour of the fighting man will come later—your hour, Von Bilderbaum—the hour of big deeds and little cunning, of personal glory and the primordial joy of destruction. Believe me, General, I envy you your hour more than you grudge me mine. It is better to be a fighting dog than a pusillanimous old fox."
Bilderbaum looked his superior squarely between the eyes.
"You were a fighting dog, yourself, in 1904," he retorted.
"For ten minutes," sneered the Commander-in-Chief.
"For ten very useful and strenuous minutes," maintained the General. "I am not sure that I am not proud of serving under you. I am quite sure that it is a good thing for his Majesty that you are not serving under me."
Meyer ignored the honourable concession. He was gazing through his field-glasses at the distant guns, which were now three parts of the way up the hill.