e her brewer's son happy, and prefer his beer
and brewery horses to my oil and chargers. That unfortunate love of
mine has long ceased to be anything but a spectre, a mere phantom, as
is shown most clearly by the verses I have composed about it. Elfinger
told me to my face long ago: 'You don't love her at all; the stronger
the love, the weaker the love poems, and yours are unusually good this
time!' Nevertheless, Angelica, you are not altogether wrong in
supposing that I am going off to the war on account of an unhappy
passion. It is the same hopeless affection that has robbed me of my
usual good spirits for some time past. But what's the odds? The powder
that is to remedy this folly has been invented at last!"

"_Another_ unhappy love affair? Oh, you wretch! I could almost take
sides with the beautiful Nanny; she must have found out what a
butterfly with blue-velvet wings was fluttering around her!"

"Well, whether what she did was right or wrong, she certainly conferred
a great favor upon us both by acting as she did. But, just because I
tried to retain my constancy as long as I possibly could, I grew
melancholy when I found how much difficulty I had in feeling the
slightest pain at the faithlessness of this young daughter of the
Philistines--of this Delilah for whom I once out off my beard and
flowing locks. And even though I have been perhaps unduly led, by my
sense of justice, to do homage to different styles of beauty at the
same time or in rapid succession--I am punished now more cruelly than I
have deserved. However, there is no help for it. It is to be hoped it
won't last long. It is true that as volunteer nurses, for as such we
are going to report ourselves (for Elfinger can't stand it any longer
either), we shan't at once get into the heaviest fire; and of course no
one can expect for a moment that we would enter as privates at this
late day, and go through a course of drill, and then follow after the
rest when the sport is all over. But during the battle, when all is
confusion, when human beings are bowled down like lead soldiers,
perhaps there will be a stray bullet for one of us--"

"Don't talk in that godless way, Rosenbusch! It is very noble and brave
of you to want to go with the rest; it certainly does you honor. But,
because it is such a holy cause, do leave your jests behind you; forget
'all lighter trifling, dalliance sweet,' and--and when you are in the
field--and really--"

She suddenly broke