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Suddenly he understood it all: Klitzing had sacrificed himself for him, his friend had saved him from the death-dealing blow of that iron-shod hoof, and there he now lay upon the grass, pale, unconscious perhaps dead. At this moment the unconscious man's eyelids opened at last with difficulty, his dull gaze went searching round, then rested upon Vogt with an expression of boundless devotion.
Only one sat regarding his dry loaf disconsolately: Klitzing, a pale, spare young fellow with hollow cheeks, whose uniform was a world too wide for him. Vogt, who sat beside him, cut a big piece from his smoked sausage and pushed it to his neighbour: "There, comrade, let's go shares!" Klitzing at first declined; but at last he took it, and thanked Vogt shyly.
Klitzing, with his whole body trembling, stood by as if he had been paralysed. But the brewer bent his round head like a furious bull, and charged, using his skull as a battering ram, right into the middle of the scrimmage. Now there were two against ten. The odds were still far too great; and the brewer also was soon on the floor.
The two stretcher-bearers now began to undress Klitzing with their practised hands, and the clerk was soon lying beneath the silken coverlet, the royal crown over his head. Then one of the men asked: "What shall we do now?" and the other answered: "Well, we'd better go back to the ambulance waggon, anyhow. The doctor will have arrived by this time.
Once these grey walls had seemed almost home-like to him; once, when the faithful Klitzing had the locker next his own. But that was long ago. He went down the steps and out towards the back-gate, In the drill-ground the battery, just returned from exercise, was drawn up. Vogt pulled off his hat and the captain slightly touched his cap. The greeting looked almost embarrassed.
"Yes," he said, "so it should be everywhere in Germany: Peasant farm by peasant farm, Then shall none have hunger or harm!" Vogt was grateful to the count for talking to him so sensibly and kindly; but still things were totally changed: he could not find any one to replace his faithful friend Klitzing. The poor fellow felt more and more lonely every day.
But Klitzing only smiled, and the brewer sullenly thought to himself, "Well, if that clerk has no use for his life, I have for mine, anyhow!" Carefully he pushed in the cartridge, and heaved a sigh of relief as the lock slipped back once more. At any rate, it couldn't explode at the back now and hit him. The battery now started again and went on at an easy trot to the exercise-ground.
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