STORIES***


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THE GERMAN LIEUTENANT AND OTHER STORIES

by

AUGUST STRINDBERG

Translated by Claud Field







London
T. Werner Laurie Limited
8 Essex Street, Strand
1915




     August Strindberg. Born at Stockholm, January 22, 1849;
     died there, May 14, 1912. A Swedish dramatist and novelist,
     a leader of modern Swedish literature. Among his plays
     are "Master Olof" (1872), "Gilletshemlighet" (1880),
     "Fadren" (1887), "Froken Julie" (1888), "Glaubiger"
     (1889), "Till Damaskus" (1808), and a series of historical
     dramas including "Gustavas Wasa," "Erik XIV.," "Gustavas
     Adolphus," and "Carol XII." He wrote also "Roda rummet"
     (1879), "Det nya riket" (1882), which provoked so much
     criticism that the author left Sweden for a number of
     years; "Svenska folket HELG OCH SOKEN" (1882), "GIFTAS"
     (1884), "DIE BEICHTE EINES THOREN" (1893), "INFERNO"
     (1897), written after one of his periodical attacks of
     insanity; "EINSAM" (1903), an autobiographical novel; "DIE
     GOTISCHEN ZIMMER" (1904), and many other volumes. He has
     been called "the Shakspere of Sweden."

                       --_The Century Cyclopaedia of Names_.




CONTENTS



    THE GERMAN LIEUTENANT
    OVER-REFINEMENT
    "UNWELCOME"
    HIGHER AIMS
    PAUL AND PETER
    A FUNERAL
    THE LAST SHOT




THE GERMAN LIEUTENANT




CHAPTER I


It was fourteen days after Sedan, in the middle of September, 1870. A
former clerk in the Prussian Geological Survey, later a lieutenant in
the reserve, named Von Bleichroden, sat in his shirt-sleeves before a
writing-table in the Cafe du Cercle, the best inn of the little town
Marlotte. He had thrown his military coat with its stiff collar over
the back of a chair, and there it hung limp, and collapsed like a
corpse, with its empty arms seeming to clutch at the legs of the chair
to keep itself from falling headlong. Round the body of the coat one
saw the mark of the sword-belt, and the left coat-tail was rubbed quite
smooth by the sheath. The back of the coat was as dusty as a high-road,
and the lieutenant-geologist might have studied the tertiary deposits
of the district on the edges of his much-worn trousers. When the
orderlies came into the room with their dirty boots, he could till by
the traces they left on the floor whether they had been walking over
Eocene or Pleiocene formations. He was really more a geologist than a
soldier, but for the present he was a letter-writer. He had pushed his
spectacles up to his forehead, sat with his pen at rest, and looked out
of the window.

The garden lay in all its autumn glory before him, and the branches of
the apple and pear trees bent with a load of the most splendid fruit to
the ground. Orange-red pumpkins sunned themselves close beside prickly
grey-green artichokes; fiery-red tomatoes clambered up sticks near
wool-white cauliflowers; sun-flowers as large as a plate were turning
their yellow disks towards the west, where the sun was beginning to
sink; whole companies of dahlias, white as fresh-starched linen,
purple-red like congealed blood, dirty-red like fresh-slaughtered
flesh, salmon-red, sulphur-yellow, flax-, mottled and speckled,
sang one great flower-concert. Then there was the sand-strewn path
lined by two rows of giant gilly-flowers; faintly lilac-,
dazzlingly ice-blue, and straw-yellow, they continued the perspective
to where the vineyards stood in their brownish-green array, a small
wood of thyrsus-staves with the reddened grape-clusters half hidden
under the leaves. Behind them were the whitening, unharvested stalks
of the cornfields, with the over-ripe ears of corn hanging sorrowfully
towards the ground, with wide-open husks and bractlets at every gust of
wind paying their tribute to the earth and bursting with their juices.
And far in the background were the oak-tree tops and the beechen arches
of the Forest of Fontainebleau, whose outlines melted away into the
finest denticulations, like old Brussels lace, into the extreme meshes
of which the horizontal rays of the evening sun wove gold threads. Some
bees were still visiting the splendid honey-flowers in the garden; a
robin-redbreast twittered in an apple tree; strong gusts of scent came
now and then from the gilly-flowers, as when one walks along a pavement
and the door of a scent-shop is opened.

The lieutenant sat with his pen at rest, visibly entranced by the
beautiful scene. "What a lovely land!" he thought, and his recollection
went back to the sandy plain of his home, diversified by some wretched
stunted firs which stretched their gnarled arms towards the sky as
though they implored the favour of not having to drown in the sand.

But the beautiful landscape which was framed in the window was shadowed
as regularly as clockwork by the musket of the sentry, whose bright,
shining bayonet bisected the picture, and who turned on his rounds
exactly under a pear tree heavily laden with the finest yellow-green
Napoleon pears.

The lieutenant thought for a moment of asking him to choose another
beat, but did not venture to do so; so in order to escape the flash of
the bayonet, he let his gaze wander to the left over the courtyard.
There stood the cook-house with its yellow-plastered wall, and an old
knotty vine spread out against it like the skeleton of some animal in a
museum; the vine was without leaves or clusters, and it stood there as
though crucified, nailed fast to the decaying espalier, stretching out
its long tough arms and fingers as though it wished to draw the sentry
into its ghostly embrace as he turned.

The lieutenant turned away and looked at his writing-table. There lay
the unfinished letter to his young wife whom he had married four months
previously, two months before the war broke out. Beside his field-glass
and the list of the French General Staff lay Hartmann's "Philosophy
of the Unconscious" and Schopenhauer's "Parerga and Paralipomena."
Suddenly he rose from the table and walked up and down the room. It
had been the meeting and dining-room of the artists' colony which had
now vanished. The wainscoting of the walls was adorned with little
oil-paintings recording happy hours in the beautiful hospitable country
which so generously opened its art-schools and its exhibitions to
foreigners. Here were depicted Spanish dancing-women, Roman monks,
scenes from the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, Dutch wind-mills,
Scandinavian fishing-villages and Swiss Alps. Into one corner had crept
an easel of walnut-wood, and seemed to be hiding itself in the shadow
from some threatening bayonets. A palette smeared with half-dried
colours hung there and looked like a liver hanging in a pork-shop. Some
red Spanish militia caps belonging to the painters, with the colour
half faded by exposure to the sun and rain, hung on the clothes-horse.

The lieutenant felt embarrassed, like one who has intruded into a
stranger's house, and expects the owner to come and surprise him. He
therefore abruptly ceased walking up and down and took his seat at the
table in order to continue his letter. He had finished the first pages,
which were full of expressions of his sorrow, home-sickness and anxiety
since he had lately heard news which confirmed his joyful hopes of
becoming a father. He dipped his pen in the ink rather in order to have
someone to talk with than to give or ask for news. He wrote as follows:


"So, for example, when I with my hundred men after a march of
fourteen hours without food or water, came