"That's not always so," interrupted his son.
"Always, as far as lieutenants are concerned, I bet you any amount. It is well known to you that the late Emperor Frederick had signed a Cabinet Order commanding his officers to wear uniform only when on duty; on other occasions they were to appear in civilian dress. I will not criticise in any way this Imperial command, which is not yet in force, but if it were in force, one thing I can tell you—with one stroke it would have robbed the lieutenants of their social importance. The young girls would be bitterly disappointed, and the Enfeld Hussars would not then be in such great request. Now, after what I have told you, do you not see that the carrying out of this order would have been for the benefit of the officers in many ways?"
Fritz had been listening to his father with astonishment, and now he said: "But what sort of a life do you think we ought to live? Without amusements or social intercourse we could not exist, we should grow stupid and dull."
"Don't you imagine it, my boy," laughed the old man. "Confess, honestly, do you ever talk about anything sensible at these entertainments? You speak, and that is all, you whisper sweet words, or talk gossip to one another, but have you ever talked about one serious subject at any place where you have been to? You could not indeed do that, for you are far too stupid. Don't be offended at my harsh words, but I am quite right in what I say. No one, however, ought to reproach you with your stupidity. The majority of officers have been cadets, and what do you learn in the army? Drill, riding, how to judge a horse, manners and behaviour, but what else? What is added in the way of knowledge is not worth talking about, but it's considered quite sufficient for an officer. I have been in the army and I can tell you that I have often felt horribly, horribly ashamed when I saw how little I knew that an educated man ought to know. It is the rarest thing in the world nowadays for a young officer to go on with his education. If he ever does study it's simply military subjects, and except for this he is only too delighted when his duties are over to take his ease or to fill himself with alcohol, and I must say the last occupation is by no means the worst. Pass along the wine, my boy," and again the glasses clinked.
"Let me see, what was I just saying?" asked the major. "Oh, yes, I remember. Well, you see, your intellectual education ought not to be of a kind to make you long to go to entertainments and festivities; on the contrary, if you were better educated you would feel how boring it is to dine to-day at the Mullers, to-morrow at the Schulzes, and to dance about with young girls; you could easily dispense with the conversation, I'll be bound, but not with the dinners and the girls."
"But what do you want, then, father? I really don't understand you. Almost every week one reads in the papers of some scandal or other that has taken place in a little garrison town. Either two drunken lieutenants have boxed each other's ears, or have carried on with each other's wives, or there is some other addition to the Chronique Scandaleuse. And as excuse it is always said, with complete justice: 'The men there have nothing but the public-houses to go to, they ruin morals; if they had the society which their brother officers enjoy in the large towns these things would not happen.' We should simply die if we couldn't go to these little entertainments, and now you want to deprive us of them."
"I was not meaning that, I only want to alter them, to make them simpler, to reorganise the whole thing. To-day, when two lieutenants meet on duty in the morning, and one tells the other that yesterday he dined with such and such a man of wealth, the other asks, with deadly seriousness: 'Does he give one decent things to eat?' Then the first speaker, who is otherwise very proud of the fact that, owing to mental stupidity, he cannot learn anything by heart, rattles off the long menu, together with the names of the various wines! If an old staff-officer who knows how to judge good wine did this I should not object—the man has a right, I might almost say a sacred duty, to recognise with gratitude what the Almighty allows him to have in the shape of excellent wine—but when a lieutenant of twenty does this it is nothing but a vice to boast of. When people are young they ought not to think about what is put before them, they ought not indeed to know anything about it, but they are unfortunately being educated into gourmands and gourmets. Whenever a lieutenant is invited to dinner the lady of the house wrings her hands and says: 'We must not give this and that, it's not good enough; and if we don't give these fine gentlemen good things to eat they won't come here again, they are so dreadfully spoiled nowadays.'"
"It is, as you know, the universal custom to invite captains or staff-officers to dinner, lieutenants only to balls, but is the supper after a ball anything else but a dinner served later in the evening? There are caviare, lobster salads, pasties of goose-liver—I know the whole list—and one bottle of champagne follows the other, and that is the folly. No, not the folly, but the wickedness which Society commits against the young officers; you are so terribly spoiled that you become firmly convinced that a luxurious life is the only life; you see it everywhere, in every house you go into, and it is, therefore, not to be wondered at if you get false ideas."
"But how do you propose to alter Society?"