with a flat, black, round head on his neck on which the Rakoczy March
was ingraved in spirals. And all at once the officer realized that for
the past six months he had done poor Meltzar a grievous injustice. How
could the poor fellow help his stupidity, how could he help his silly,
high-flown patriotic talk? How could he possibly have had sensible ideas
with a record for a head? Poor Meltzar!

Lieutenant Kadar simply could not understand why it was that six months
before, right away, when young Meltzar announced his entrance into the
battery, he had not guessed what they had done to the boy in the
hinterland.

They had given him a different head. They had unscrewed the handsome
fair young head of a lad of eighteen and in its place put a black,
scratched-up disc, which could do nothing but squeak the Rakoczy March.
That had now been proved! How the boy must have suffered whenever his
superior officer, his senior by twenty years, inflicted long sermons on
him about humanity! With the flat, round disc that they had put on him
he of course could not comprehend that the Italian soldiers being led
past the battery, reeking with blood and in rags, would also much rather
have stayed at home, if a bulletin on the street corner had not forced
them to leave their homes immediately, just as the mobilization in
Hungary had forced the Hungarian gunners to leave their homes.

Now for the first time Lieutenant Kadar comprehended the young man's
unbending resistance to him. Now at last he realized why this boy, who
could have been his son, had so completely ignored his wisest, kindest
admonitions and explanations, and had always responded by whistling the
Rakoczy March through clenched teeth and hissing the stereotyped
fulmination, "The dogs ought to be shot to pieces."