is the quiet--when you've been lying
up there in the mountains where every shot is echoed five times, and all
of a sudden it turns absolutely quiet, no whistling, no howling, no
thundering--nothing but a glorious quiet that you can listen to as to a
piece of music! The first few nights I sat up the whole time and kept my
ears cocked for the quiet, the way you try to catch a tune at a
distance. I believe I even shed a tear or two--it was so delightful to
listen to no sound."

The three young men tease the last speaker good-naturedly, and they all
laugh together. Every one of them is intoxicated by the peace of the
sleeping town and the autumn garden. Every one of them wants to make the
most of his time, to lose nothing, "to take everything easily with his
eyes tight shut, like a child before it enters a dark room."

Now the Frau Major breaks in, breathing more quickly as she speaks:

"...But, tell me, what was the most awful thing you went through out
there?"

The men purse up their lips. This theme does not enter into their
program. Suddenly a strident voice speaks out of the darkness:

"Awful? The only awful thing is the going off. You go off to war--and
they let you go. That's the awful thing."

A glacial silence follows. The Frau Major makes a bolt for it, to escape
hearing the sequel. On the pretext that she has got to get back into the
town, and that the last tram is just leaving, she takes with her the
unhappy little wife, to whom the husband's words have come as a veiled
reproach. The officers are left alone, and one of them, hoping to change
the current of thought in the sick man's mind, passes a friendly
compliment upon the wife's appearance. The other springs to his feet and
says in a fury: "Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing!... She didn't shed a
tear when I left on the train. Oh, they were all very dashing when we
went off. Poor Dill's wife was, too. Very plucky. She threw roses at him
in the train, and she'd been his wife for only two months.... Roses! He,
he! 'See you soon again!' They were all so patriotic!..."

He goes on to recount what happened to Dill. Poor Dill was showing to
his comrades the new photograph his wife had sent him, when an exploding
shell sent a boot flying against his head. In the boot was the leg of a
cavalryman who had been blown to pieces many yards away. On the boot was
a great spur which stuck into Dill's brain. It took four of them to
pull the boot out, and a piece of brain