one could have betrayed to the soldier that since then, whenever his
company commander looked at him, he could not help seeing the lemon-
hued, thick-veined hand with its knotted, distorted fingers, which had
touched the rough, hairy cloth with such ineffable love. And yet,
somehow, the rascal had discovered that this hand floated above him
protectingly, that it prayed for him and had softened the heart of his
officer.

Marschner tramped across the meadow in rage against himself. He was as
ashamed as though some one had torn a mask from his face. Was it as easy
as that to see through him, then, in spite of all the trouble he took?
He stopped to get his breath, hewed at the grass again with his riding
whip, and cursed aloud. Oh, well, he simply couldn't act a part,
couldn't step out of his skin suddenly, even though there was a world
war a thousand times over. He used to let his nephews and nieces twist
him round their fingers, and laughed good-naturedly when they did it. In
a single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon
the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all
people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted
philanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turn
straight into a blood-thirsty militarist. He was no longer twenty, like
Weixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted from
their lives were each of them far more to him than a mere rifle to be
sent to the repair shop if broken, or to be indifferently discarded if
smashed beyond repair. Whoever had looked on life from all sides and
reflected upon it could not so easily turn into the mere soldier, like
his lieutenant, who had not been humanized yet, nor seen the world from
any point of view but the military school and the barracks.

Ah, yes, if conditions still were as at the beginning of the war, when