"Our Moltke," so mild and affable and courteous, truly, when the Genius that possessed thee spread his steely wings and soared, thou wert a very terrible old man, or so it seems to me.
The descriptive article laid by, you found P. C. Breagh, in the interests of Mr. Knewbit, studying his fellow-travelers. The weak-eyed, spectacled young soldier on his left-hand, whose fingers were burned and yellow-stained, as though their owner had dabbled in chemical experiments, and who had remained mute as a fish throughout the journey, only opening his mouth to eat or drink, or reply to a remark addressed to him by a non-commissioned officer, was reading the "Iliad" of Homer in the original, from a little parchment-bound, Amsterdam-printed Elzevir edition, that he seemed to cherish as the apple of one of his short-sighted eyes.... A handsome young bugler in the next compartment had a well-thumbed copy of "The Pickwick Papers." The huge tanned Guardsman on his right, whose broad breast displayed the medals of 1866 and of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, and whose powerful bass notes had reverberated through the diaphragm of his neighbor when he sang, was chatting with a younger comrade who sat opposite. Holding the well-greased unburnished needle-gun between their solid thighs—to hang the silver-spiked Guard's helmet on the muzzle seemed a popular way of disposing of the headpiece—they exchanged experiences in a genial roar, subdued to a growl at confidential passages.
"Grete came to the Barracks to bid me God-speed.... There were a few tears—dried when I promised to bring her a wedding-gift from Paris. Thou seest, she is going to turn over a new leaf, and get married to a waiter at a Sommer-garten—a club-footed man who is not called upon to serve—being on the Exempt List."
They guffawed at the picture of the happy bridegroom. Said the senior, wiping his overflowing eyes with a hand as brown and broad as an undersized flitch of bacon:
"I looked up 'Mina in the Landsberger-Strasse. She could not meet me, as her old woman had a betrothal-party for one of her daughters. A young student from a Conservatoire, in a tail-coat three sizes too small for him, and a pair of linen cuffs as big as starched table-napkins, was the victim served up. I saw him as 'Mina carried in the spiced wine and rum-punch, and a longer pair of lantern-jaws I never saw. But when they sat down to table, and I took another peep through the door-crack, I promise you those jaws of his were grinding away like steam!"
"Nu, but the punch?" asked the other Guardsman.
"Sapperlot!—do you suppose I went without my whack of it?—and 'Mina's eyes as red as preserved cherries with crying about my going to the War? I had had a mug of the good stuff, and a bottle of something or other!—gilt paper on the neck of it—nothing at all but fizzle inside. Then I settled down to a jug of cool beer and the breast of a turkey, while 'Mina was waiting on the parlor-folks. Heard her step coming along the passage—thought I'd play the fool with her a bit—so I turned the kitchen-gas low and hid behind the door. In she comes!—I'd got my arms round her and kissed her—a regular juicy smack or two, before—by the yell she gave!—I knew it wasn't 'Mina at all...."
"Potzblitz! who was it, then?"
"Who but the old woman? But for the thumping size of the waist I'd squeezed, and the taste of violet-powder in my mouth, I might have thought I'd got hold of one of the young Fräuleins. 'Help, murder, thieves!' cried she. 'How dare you insult a respectable mother of a family! Give your name, you rogue, or I'll have in the police!'—'Don't do that,' says I. 'I'm only 'Mina's brother—dropped in to take leave before going to the War!'—'A fine brother!' says she. 'Do brothers hug their sisters in that bearish way? Be off with you quick march! and think yourself lucky to escape so easily!'..." He wound up: "But if she had reported me to the Herr Oberst Leutnant, nothing much would have come of it. He'd have said: 'Was sol Ich!—but we're off to the War!'"
A sentence or so more, and the conversation resolved itself into strong tobacco-smoke. Twilight was fading into dusk. Dortmund—Elberfeld—Düsseldorf had paid tribute of beers, cheers, and tears to the defenders of German Unity, the most inveterate songsters and conversationalists were getting sleepy, and it would be midnight before the troop-train, traveling, like the others that followed it, at a speed strictly calculated to permit of the somewhat slower transit of six supplementary trains bearing the King and his Great Headquarter Staff—could reach Cologne.