"Don't you know that directly it came back the Landwehr was disbanded?"
"Even the staff is broken up," remarked another.
"Then I must try my luck with the Commissioner-General," replied Lieutenant Baumgart. "I have more reason, perhaps, than any one else to be extra careful that my discharge papers are in good order. At least, I fancy so. I don't want the reproach to be fastened on me that I sneaked out of the army secretly. So, please let me know as soon as you can if there will be any conveyance going to-morrow to Königsberg?"
A storm of indignation arose. They all left their seats, some seizing his hand, some forming a cordon round him, as if to prevent his departure by physical force.
"Stay at least a little longer, lest the fête we are organising in your honour should fall through," exhorted Karl Engelbert, the young host, as soon as he could make his voice heard above the hubbub.
Baumgart turned to him with a quick gesture of inquiry.
"In my honour?" he exclaimed. "Are you mad?"
"There's no getting out of it now," was the answer. "It was all settled the day you turned up here. I despatched Johann Radtke at once with a list of all the Jägers in the country round who are at home. Then, you know, we have representatives of six or seven regiments living about here.... Especially did I impress on him that he was to go to Schranden, where Merckel lives. Merckel," he added, "went over to the Landwehr, too; for if he hadn't, he couldn't have made sure of his lieutenancy. So there was more sense in his taking the step."
Baumgart at the mention of his name winced, but quickly recovering himself, gripped convulsively the arms of the battered easy-chair, and, with head bowed, listened in silence to what his well-meaning friends had to say about the gala-day arranged in his honour. He gave up protesting further, because he saw open resistance was useless. But the uneasy glances he cast about him seemed to indicate that he was meditating immediate flight.
His friends, however, did not observe his restlessness. After the excitement of war which had stirred their blood out of its normal channel, they found it irksome to subside into the ordinary routine of private life, and hailed with delight any excuse for varying its monotony with a few hours' roistering and dissipation. They were now engaged in eagerly discussing the result of their messenger's mission, whose return from Schranden, a few miles away, they had been expecting hourly all the morning.