The Guns of Europe | Page 4

progress. John, I feel sometimes that you are almost hopeless. You have a frivolous strain that you ought to get rid of as soon as you can."
"Well, sir, I had to laugh at those fat Venuses of Rubens and Jordaens. They may be art, but I never thought that Venus weighed three hundred pounds. I know those two painters had to advertise all through the Low Countries, before they could get models fat enough."
"Stop, John! Is nothing sacred to you?"
"A lady can be too fat to be sacred."
Mr. Anson shook his head. He always stood impressed, and perhaps a little awed before centuries of culture, and he failed to understand how any one could challenge the accepted past. John's Philistine spirit, which he deemed all the more irregular in one so young pained him at times. Yet it was more as sumed than real with young 1 Scott.
They reached their hotel and passed into the diningroom, where both did full justice to the good German food. John did not fail to make his usual inspection of guests, but he started a little, when he saw the Prussian officer of the gallery, alone at a table by a window overlooking the Elbe. It was one of the pleasantest views in Europe, but John knew very well that the man was thinking little of it. His jaw had not lost is pugnacious thrust, and he snapped his or ders to the waiter as if he were rebuking a recruit.
Nobody had told John that he was a Prussian, but the young American knew it nevertheless, and he knew him to be a product, out of the very heart of that iron military system, before which the whole world stood afraid, buttressed as it was by tremendous victories over France, and a state of readiness known to be without an equal.
Herr Simmering, fat, bland and bald, was bending over them, asking them solicitously if all was right. John always liked this bit of personal attention from the European hotel proprietors. It established a friendly feeling. It showed that one was not lost among the swarm of guests, and here in Germany it invariably made his heart warm to the civilians.
"Can you tell us, Herr Simmering," he asked, "who is the officer alone in the alcove by the window?"
Herr Gustav Adolph Simmering, the soul of blandness and courtesy, stiffened in an instant. With the asking of that simple question he seemed to breathe a new and surcharged air. He lost his expansiveness in the presence of the German army or any representa tive of it. Lowering his voice he replied :
"A captain attached in some capacity to the General Staff in Berlin. Rudolf von Boehlen is his name. It is said that he has high connections, a distant cousin of the von Moltkes, in much favor, too, with the Em peror."
"Do Prussian officers have to come here and tell the Saxons what to do?"
The good Herr Simmering spread out his hands in horror. These simple Americans surely asked strange and intrusive questions. One could forgive them only because they were so open, so much like innocent chil dren, and, unlike those disagreeable English, quarreled so little about their bills.
"I know no more," he replied. "Here in Germany we never ask why an officer comes and goes. We trust implicitly in the Emperor and his advisers who have guarded us so well, and we do not wish to learn the higher secrets of state. We know that such knowl edge is not for us."
Dignified and slow, as became an important land lord, he nevertheless went away with enough haste to indicate clearly to John that he wished to avoid any more questions about the Prussian officer. John was annoyed. He felt a touch of shame for Herr Sim mering.
"I wish the Germans wouldn't stand in such tre mendous awe of their own army," he said. "They seem to regard it as some mysterious and omnipotent force which is always right."
"Don't forget their education and training, John. The great German empire has risen upon the victories of 1870, and if ever war between them should come again Germany could smash France as easily as she did then."
"I could never become reconciled to the spectacle of an empire treading a republic into the earth."
Mr. Anson smiled. He had dined well, and he was at peace with the earth.
"Names mean little," he said indulgently.
John did not reply, but his under jaw thrust for ward in a pugnacious manner, startlingly like that of the Prussian. The officer, although no word had passed between them, nor even a glance of real hostility had aroused a stubborn antagonism, increased by the obvious awe of Herr Simmering and the deference paid to him by the whole establishment of the hotel.
He saw Captain von