Is was a hellish nuisance to a middle-aged man to have to get himself out of his full-dress uniform. One grew hot at the mere thought of unfastening the shoulder belt and sword belt, collar hooks, buckles, swivels, and so on. Last, but not least, the final wrestle with the polished, spurred jack boots....
"God be thanked, I am not wearing the cuirass!" he said to himself devoutly, as he laid hand upon his bedroom door.
It swung back, and then his vexation passed from him. On a little table near the hearthside, where yet some embers of a fire glowed redly, stood a little gayly-caparisoned Christmas tree. Under its branches, adorned with red-and-white tapers as yet unlighted, lay the gifts that came from home.
He crossed the room in two long steps and stood smiling before the little fir tree. The purplish redness died out of his great cheeks and jowl, the congested veins no longer stood out like ropes upon his throat and temples. The great eyes that had blazed with Satanic pride softened into tenderness, as he picked up the gifts one by one and looked at them.
"From His Daughter to Papachen," said an embroidered tobacco pouch. "From Bill" and "From Herbert" a gold fusee box and a smoker's knife were respectively labeled. "From thy wife Johanna" was written on a slip of paper attached to the case that contained a handsome cup of Tula ware. He turned the cup in his hands many times before he returned it to its outer husk. He said fondly, familiarly, as though the giver were standing beside him:
"Little thou carest, thou good heart!—whether thou art wife to a Chancellor of the North German Confederation, or the Chancellor of the German Empire. One object in life thou hast—and that is to get the old man home again!" After a moment he added, pitching the Bavarian Treaty on the center table, unhooking and removing his sword belt, and throwing it on the couch: "Babel must be bombarded, or thou wilt not be pleased with me ... am I not a good pupil, to have learned my lesson so well?"
The shoulder belt came off with a slight degree of twisting and fumbling. He laid it aside, and moved to the slaving glass, and by its aid unfastened from his collar swivel the Iron Cross. "Good!" he commented, and laid it on top of a dispatch box on the center table. Then he began slowly and methodically to unfasten the other Orders from his breast. As he pricked a finger with the pin of one in wrenching at it angrily, it occurred to him that it would have been perfectly feasible to have removed his dress tunic with all its decorations, and this discovery stung him to wrath.
"Kreuzdonnerwetter!—am I, then, such a sheep's head?" he said angrily to himself. Something dropped upon the floor with a tinkle and rolled away merrily under a chair, leaving its owner with the thick silver pin that had secured it gripped between his finger and thumb. It was the medallion bestowed upon him in '42 for an act of gallantry, the obverse a shield of silver on a circle, bearing a red-enameled Prussian eagle, and on the reverse the inscription: "Für Rettung aus Gefahr."
The pin remained in his hand. Cursing his own clumsiness, he took the lighted candle he had placed upon the center table upon entering, and stooped to recover the evasive prize. Both hands were required for the task, that was quickly apparent. Half unconsciously he reverted to a habit for which his wife had often playfully scolded him—nipped the broken silver pin between his teeth and bent down to resume his search upon the floor.
As he stooped, the detonation of a driving charge and the deafening roar and shriek of a huge shell were followed by an ear-splitting explosion. His practiced ear told him. that the shell had been fired from the Fortress of St. Valérien. Half a dozen others followed in rapid succession. No alarm trumpet sounded. Dogs barked, near and far, the echoes of the cannonade rattled among the woods and high grounds, then died out. He said to himself: "Those sugar plums have done damage somewhere near St. Germain.... Now, then, where is this runaway medal?"