Then there was a slaughter indeed. The Communists fought like tigers, asking no quarter. They were shot down by squads, regularly and with ceremony. And we in our turn snatched their own rifles and revolvers and shot them down also…. "Coming, Frau Wittwe! So fort!" …
* * * * *
And the rest—well, the rest is, that I have a wife and seven beautiful children. Yes, "The girl I left behind me," as your song sings. Ah, a joke. But the seven children are no joke, young Kerl, as you may one day find.
And why am I Oberkellner at the Prinz Karl in Heidelberg? Ah, gentlemen,
I see you do not know. In the winter it is as you see it; but all the
summer and autumn—what with Americans and English, it is better to be
Oberkellner to Madame the Frau Wittwe than to be Prince of
Kennenlippeschönberghartenau!
V
THE CASE OF JOHN ARNISTON'S CONSCIENCE
Hail, World adored! to thee three times all hail!
We at thy mighty shrine—profane, obscure
With clenchèd hands beat at thy cruel door,
O hear, awake, and let us in, O Baal!
Low at thy brazen gates ourselves we fling—
Hear us, even us, thy bondmen firm and sure,
Our kin, our souls, our very God abjure!
Art thou asleep, or dead, or journeying?
Bear us, O Ashtoreth, O Baal, that we
In mystic mazes may a moment gleam,
May touch and twine with hot hearts pulsing free
Among thy groves by the Orontes stream.
Open and make us, ere our sick hearts fail,
Hewers of wood within thy courts, O Baal!