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Updated: June 15, 2025
Colonel von Falkenhein was the first to congratulate his acting adjutant, and it astonished him that an event of the kind, bound to occur in the natural order of things, should throw the sedate Reimers into such a state of excitement. The new senior-lieutenant, too, was surprised at himself, having hitherto imagined that he regarded such externals with considerable equanimity.
Colonel Falkenhein gave him only a prolonged handshake; but Reimers could read the great gladness in his eyes. The colonel had treated the young man almost as a son; and a year before, when the doctors had sent Reimers to Egypt as a consumptive patient with a very doubtful prospect of recovery, had seen him depart with a heavy heart. Now, looking upon him once more, he was doubly glad.
Falkenhein listened for a second at the door: Mariechen was still weeping; but he could hope that the tempest would subside. That tearful outburst, uncontrolled as it was, showed still the unruly grief of a child. The blow that strikes deepest into the heart and embitters a whole life-time is otherwise met and parried, with a grim, silent, enduring pain.
"I know," she whispered. And he asseverated: "Even when I was hovering round Marie Falkenhein, it was you, you that I loved. You, only you! Hannah, do you believe me?" She nodded: "I know." Suddenly her aspect changed, and instead of the overpowering happiness came a hard, bitter expression. "I know, too," she continued, in a low voice, "why you have broken off with Marie Falkenhein."
And imagine, Mariechen, dear Mariechen one of our best friends Senior-lieutenant Reimers that's how it is with him just as with poor Otto Krewesmühlen; but he will renounce his happiness. He is a brave man." Falkenhein breathed more freely. Thank God! the mischief was out. He looked anxiously across at Marie. Her face had become as white as the table-cloth. He was afraid she might faint.
So he could not cut up too rough. "Nevertheless," continued the colonel more cheerfully, "he regarded it as desirable that a greater similarity should gradually be obtained." Güntz answered firmly: "Forgive me, sir, I cannot promise the general this in anticipation. I could not bring it into harmony with my conception of the duty of an officer." "Good," answered Falkenhein.
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.
The regiment, because it has such an excellent commanding officer at its head; and you, because you have made your regiment such a splendid body of men." Hardly a very brilliant or very witty remark, this; but it sounded pleasantly, and one could not reasonably expect higher praise. Falkenhein was in the best of good humours.
The delightful intimate relations between himself and those dear people had already been destroyed by scarcely perceptible degrees. The thought of Marie Falkenhein weighed on him the least heavily. When he had once got over the first bitter sorrow at his ill fortune he thought of her, strangely enough, with no desperate longing, but rather with a feeling of shame.
There was, in fact, nothing to hide. The thoughtless behaviour which had had such serious consequences was in itself one of those offences which society looks upon as venial. But he reproached himself chiefly with the breach of faith towards Marie Falkenhein, to whom he considered himself to have been virtually betrothed, in allowing himself to be carried away by the impulse of a moment's folly.
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