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Updated: May 8, 2025
For a moment Captain Marschner stood speechless. He opened his lips, but no sound came from his throat. At last his tongue obeyed him and he yelled, with a mad choking fury in his voice: "Lieutenant Weixler!" "Yes, sir," came back unconcernedly. Captain Marschner ran toward the lieutenant with clenched fists and scarlet face. "Did you fire?" he panted, breathless.
All these things were part of the civil engineer, Rudolf Marschner, who once upon a time had been an officer, but who had returned to school when thirty years old to exchange the trade of war, into which he had wandered in the folly of youth, for a profession that harmonized better with his gentle, thoughtful nature.
An officer was galloping along the path that ran about the hill half way from the top. On his head he wore the tall cap that marked him as a member of the general staff. He reined in his horse, asked courteously where the company was bound and raised his eyebrows when Captain Marschner explained the precise position they were to take.
A few feet away a little whirl of dust was puffed up, and invisible hail stones slapped rattling down upon the grass. A shrapnel! Captain Marschner looked round startled, and to his terror saw all the men's eyes fixed on him, as though asking his advice. A peculiar smile of shame and embarrassment hovered about their lips.
A few minutes before Captain Marschner had seen the man still running the same face still full of vitality from heat and excitement. His knees gave way. The sight of that change, so incomprehensible in its suddenness, gripped at his vitals like an icy hand. Was it possible? Could all the life blood recede in the twinkling of an eye, and a strong, hale man crumble into ruins in a few moments?
There was no Italian suppleness and grace in Wagner's nature: when he was in deadly earnest, and striving to express himself without thinking of models, he wrote gorgeous stuff; when the inspiration waned, or when he deluded himself with the belief that what he supposed to be Bellini-like tunes really expressed the feeling of the moment, then he gave us pages as dry and dreary as Spontini and Marschner at their worst.
For a boy of twenty the opera is wonderfully well planned. Whether, had it been written by Marschner, we should take the trouble to look at it twice is a question I contentedly leave others to solve.
Marschner sank into himself as he stood deserted in the empty trench. He felt as though he had been hollowed out, and looked about for help, and his eyes clung to the depression from which the corpses had now been lifted. Only the three Italians were lying there, the life already gone from them.
Then he shook his clenched fist, and sent out a long curve of saliva from between his set teeth, and muttered in a disgust that came from the depths of his soul: "Hell!" The company rested for half an hour at the edge of the woods. Then Captain Marschner gave the command to start.
The captain had to see! He pulled his head farther out from under the mound and uttered a hoarse cry, a cry of infinite horror. The wretched man was dragging his entrails behind him! "Weixler!" burst from him in a shudder of compassion. The man turned slowly, looked down at Marschner questioningly, pale, sad, with frightened eyes.
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