Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/162

 We waited. Nobody spoke.

A quarter of an hour later he was back again.

"They found her. Do you know where they found her? She was at her father's, the old rogue knew about it all and helped her in everything. A telegram is there. The superintendent asked me whether I wanted to spend the rest of my leave at home. I said no, I wanted to go back to the front immediately. He praised me for that. Well, I'm going on with my soldiering, food, drink, the trenches with the music of the bullets, Goodbye, gentlemen."

And he was already outside. He had blown in like the wind, he had turned round like the wind, and like the wind he was off again.

"I think he's still fond of her," remarked Mr. Fels.

Hedrich sat there with wide-opened eyes. "A man oughtn't to marry, no, he oughtn't" he remarked.

And I thought of this primitive corporal, and above his story I saw a countenance arise with a livid, terror-stricken gaze, the countenance of the female-animal. As a girl she had grown up to get married, and when she had married, the meaning of her life had departed to the war. Assuredly she had waited, had defied her young blood, until How many such tiny destinies were wedged in amid this great war, how many lives was it trampling upon and crushing, directly or indirectly?

I wanted to busy myself with Molière, but at the second page I noticed that my mind was not taking in what I was reading with my eyes. I put it aside.

 

Molière is not a hard and unrelenting judge like Shakespeare. He only holds a mirror up to his age, watches it regarding itself