On the evening of the annual day of mourning, the party returned from the fortress. The Archduchess slept. The Crown Prince talked, mostly to Hedwig, and even she said little. After a time the silence affected the boy’s high spirits. He leaned back in his chair on the deck of the launch, and watched the flying landscape. He counted the riverside shrines to himself. There were, he discovered, just thirteen between the fortress and the city limits.
Old Father Gregory sat beside him. He had taken off his flat black hat, and it lay on his knee. The ends of his black woolen sash fluttered in the wind, and he sat, benevolent hands folded, looking out.
From guns to shrines is rather a jump, and the Crown Prince found it difficult.
“Do you consider fighting the duty of a Christian?” inquired the Crown Prince suddenly.
Father Gregory, whose mind had been far away, with his boys’ school at Etzel, started.
“Fighting? That depends. To defend his home is the Christian duty of every man.”
“But during the last war,” persisted Otto, “we went across the mountains and killed a lot of people. Was that a Christian duty?”
Father Gregory coughed. He had himself tucked up his soutane and walked forty miles to join the army of invasion, where he had held services, cared for the wounded, and fired a rifle, all with equal spirit. He changed the subject to the big guns at the fortress.
“I think,” observed the Crown Prince, forgetting his scruples, “that if you have a pencil and an old envelope to draw on, I’ll invent a big gun myself.”
Which he proceeded to do, putting in a great many wheels and levers, and adding, a folding-table at the side on which the gunners might have afternoon tea—this last prompted by the arrival just then of cups and saucers and a tea service.