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Updated: July 22, 2025
Reimers felt the captain take his hand and give it a quick, hearty shake; but before he could answer, Madelung had turned and walked away to the table. At this moment the colonel appeared. He greeted each of the older officers with a couple of words, and the younger with a general nod. Reimers alone, on the day of his return, had a special greeting and a hearty handshake.
And Andreae, who, as a healer of men must also have some knowledge of the inside of beasts, was called on to endorse this view as to the excellence of carrots as fodder. Thus Reimers felt himself rather out of it all, and was just about to leave the mess-room and join his younger comrades, when Madelung came towards him. The lieutenant waited expectantly.
But Madelung put him at his ease with a nod, and said, glancing sharply at him, "So you are the other exotic prodigy who is being fêted to-day!" He laughed drily. The lieutenant made no response, and Madelung went on rapidly: "I may tell you that I envy you!"
Only such remarkably active and circumspect officers as Wegstetten and Madelung could manage to satisfy both claims upon them: their ordinary military duties, and the merely personal likes and dislikes of the commander of the regiment and the brigadier. Gropphusen let his battery go as it pleased; he was in one of his wild fits. But Träger and Heuschkel quite lost their heads.
In the orderly-room Wegstetten rose briskly to meet the new-comer, and held out his hand: "Delighted to have you in my battery, Reimers; you are heartily welcome!" cutting short the lieutenant's acknowledgments with: "Yes indeed, I am pleased to have a man with me who has some actual experience of soldiering; of possibly something even more severe than that of Madelung with the fourth battery in China."
Just as of old, the various groups still kept together, and were continuing their conversations uninterruptedly. Falkenhein, in their midst, listened with amusement as the senior staff-surgeon chaffed Stuckhardt about that oldest and yet newest of nervous diseases "majoritis." Madelung was looking rather glum, and kept twirling the little silver wheel of the knife-rest.
A couple of inveterate card-players started a game of skat; and in the billiard-room Captain Madelung amused himself alone, making cannon after cannon. At his first miss he put down his cue and waited impatiently for the colonel's departure, that being the signal for the official close of the festivity.
Madelung, fresh from the Far East, paced up and down with short nervous steps between him and the disputing officers. In passing, he glanced at the two fighting-cocks with a kind of scornful pity, and at the silent toper with contempt. Major Schrader and Captain von Gropphusen were whispering and chuckling together in a window nook.
After the toast of "The King," a momentary silence fell upon the company, contrasting strangely with the clatter of voices which had preceded it. During this lull in the conversation the word "China" was spoken somewhere near the colonel, and all eyes involuntarily turned to Madelung. He sat there stiffly with his cold face, a cynical smile on his thin lips.
"It was a question of keeping your fingers out of your mouth." "What on earth had that to do with it?" put in Captain von Stuckardt, rather hesitatingly. Madelung bowed with ironical politeness. "Infection with the typhus bacillus," he replied, "was the principal danger in China, Captain von Stuckardt."
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