So then he left us alone.
"Well, my boy," I said, "you can't bring him back to life again. Come home, and if you want, I'll sleep at your house to-night."
"Never mind, uncle," he said. That's what he called me because they had once nicknamed me uncle in a joke. His face was hard and sullen, as if to say, "Why do you bother me in my grief?"
"But maybe we can talk over business?" I asked.
He had nothing to say to that. You know what an empty house is like after a funeral, gentlemen. When you come back from the cemetery, the smell of the coffin still clings, and the smell of fading flowers.
Ghastly!
My sister, to be sure, who kept house for me then--the dear good soul has been dead, too, these many years--had had things put into some sort of order, the bier removed, and so on. But not much could be done in such a hurry.
I gave orders for her to be driven home, fetched a bottle of Pütz's best port, and sat down opposite Lothar, who had taken a place on the sofa and was poking at the sole of his shoe with the point of his sword.
As I said, he was a superb fellow, tall, stalwart, just what a dragoon should be--thick moustache, heavy eyebrows, and eyes like two wheels of fire. A fine head, but his forehead a bit wild and low, because his hair grew down on it. But that sort of thing suits young people. He had the dash characteristic of the Guards, to which we all once so ardently aspired. Neither the Tilsit nor the Allenstein Dragoons could come up to it. The devil knows what the secret of it is.
We clinked glasses--to my old friend's memory, of course--and I asked him: