"That was the greatest of his heroic exploits, certainly. You ladies cannot imagine what tyranny you practice upon the masculine gender when you constrain them to this terrible servitude. To wear chains is a mere jest, but when you bind a man with a skein of thread, a mere gossamer, in fact, and then tell him he must not break it asunder, that is cruelty indeed! Why don't the English invent a machine for this sort of hard labour? They rack their brains about steamboats, about woman's rights, and the emancipation of the negro; but as to these fetters, these..."
"Come, come, attend to your skein!"
And indeed those dangerous fetters, as the General called them, were themselves in great danger, for the General in his ardour had made a slight gesture which had almost ripped them asunder.
"I'll take it away from you if you don't behave yourself properly. Fancy making such lamentations over a little skein-unravelling!"
"Oh, I am not speaking of myself. I am used to all sorts of hardships. I pity more particularly those poor innocent children who come to groan under this unnatural yoke. Just picture to yourself, my dear, one such innocent eight or nine years old, a little lad whose blood bubbles over like champagne, who sees the sun shining through the windows, who hears the boisterous mirth of his comrades outside as they play at ball, and would give anything to run away himself and romp and wrestle and turn somersaults; fancy such a one obliged to remain shut up in a room, fettered by a string of thread or cotton, and made to move his hands up and down just as if he were some stupid machine; fancy him fidgeting first on one leg and then on another, and waiting, waiting for the end of the interminable skein! I wonder they don't become utter blockheads beneath the strain. I wonder their teachers don't forbid it. If I had a child he should not be allowed to hold a skein. No son of mine, I tell you, should ever become a mere skein-unwinding machine..."
And it seemed somehow more than a jest, for the gallant soldier now suddenly forgot all about the skein entrusted to him, and with tender emotion pressed his blushing little wife to his bosom.
The little lady with infinite patience slowly disentangled the chaotic labyrinth of threads again, and then exclaimed with a deep sigh:
"Life and death lie between..."
They both knew the meaning of the allusion.
Then the uninterrupted labour proceeded again. The iron man was now completely silent, but one could observe from the unconsciously radiant expression of his face that his mind was occupied by some very pleasing thought, and in the delightful contemplation thereof he had no longer any idea that he was holding a skein of thread.