ecked out with flags, wreaths and mottoes, while crowds of
joyfully-excited people surged up and down the streets--and had arrived
at the English garden.

"Where are you taking me to?" asked Felix. "There is no hospital within
twenty miles of here, unless they have been turning the Chinese tower
into one."

"Come along," answered Schnetz. "You'll soon get things straight. The
queen-dowager selected the place herself, and no doubt many a poor
fellow will make true the saying: '_hodie eris mecum in Paradiso_.'"

"In the Paradise garden? _In our Paradise?_ The boldest imagination
among us all could never have dreamed of such a thing as our meeting
there again under such different circumstances."

"_Sic transit!_--And besides, our friends are, fortunately, much too
lively a pair of birds of paradise not to fly away again some fine
day."

When they reached the garden gate, they saw that all the benches under
the trees were empty, although in all the other beer-gardens they had
passed the people sat packed close together. An inscription indicated
the different use to which the house was now devoted, and the few
grave-looking people who met them--among the rest women with eyes red
from weeping, leading little children by the hand, and further back in
the garden the pale, tottering figures of convalescents--formed a sharp
contrast to the noisy, merry crowd that was generally to be found here
on holidays. The two friends walked thoughtfully round to the other
side of the house, and, being in uniform, had no difficulty in
obtaining admittance.

They had made the rounds of many a hospital-ward within the last year,
and had seen the after-effects of the war in much more horrible
pictures than any that clean, quiet rooms could offer them.

And yet now, when they beheld once more the halls which they had left
in the blaze of the carnival time, robbed of all their ornaments,
and the sisters of charity moving softly up and down the long row of
sick-beds, soothing a moan of pain here and mixing a cooling drink
there; and the grotesque frescoes on the bare walls no longer concealed
by tall plants; and outside the window the pure sunlight shimmering
through the green treetops, instead of the midnight stars looking in
upon a merry feast--such mingled feelings came over them that neither
could utter a word.

They started to look for their friends. But strange faces only looked
up at them from their beds of pain. Finally, a young d