The horse, who takes the leap required of him with the timidity which every human body inspires in his species, strikes Felix with his hoof. When the riders are out of sight, and all is still, Felix rises, a stinging pain in his left arm. At first he thought the arm was broken, but no, only a severe contusion causes the pain. He thrusts his hand into his coat, wraps the flag around it, and creeps wearily forward.
In his ears a single word rings: "Honor!"
He totters to the Elbe, which separates him from his comrades; there is no longer a bridge there; he does not trust his strength to swim across. Ah! and even if he does drown in the bottom of the river, the Prussians cannot find the flag, and he cares nothing for his life. He flings himself into the stream, the waves plash around his ears: "Honor!" The cold water strengthens him, and for the moment prevents the pain in his arm. He reaches the opposite shore, he himself never knew how.
He staggers on in his clothes, made heavy by the water. His mind is not clear, only grasps the idea that he must go on. He stumbles along--slowly--slowly; often he sinks down and lies still for a while, then he suddenly springs up again, feels for the flag and totters on. He does not know where he is, the Austrian camp lies before him--he does not see it--then something red shines through the gray morning light. Felix gathers up his strength; breathless, gasping, he drags himself up to what he soon recognizes as an Austrian Uhlan picket.
He reaches the picket, he can no longer speak, hands the flag to an officer, and falls to the ground.
The Uhlans--there were two or three officers among them--crowd around him. When they see his lamentable condition they speak with pride of the fidelity to his flag of this common soldier, and they say it aloud, and Felix hears it and it does him good; it seems to him that the blot upon his honor is washed away.
Then one of the officers bends over him, and suddenly starting, he cries to the others, "That is certainly Lanzberg!"
"What do you say? 'The certain Lanzberg?'" ask they, hastily. They thought Felix unconscious, but he was not.
The word, thoughtlessly spoken and not unkindly meant, goes to his heart. From that moment he knew that there was no regeneration for his honor.
He might level mountains and dam rivers, but the world in its astonishment, in its admiration, would yet find no other name for him than "the certain Lanzberg!"