it, as you thought, and found yourself only before the walls; you “reentered” it at every possible angle; you did everything apparently but pass through it. You thought yourself well out of it, and were stopped by a bastion. Its circumvallations haunted you until you came to the next station. It had pressed even the current of the river into its defensive service. There were secrets of its foundations and mines that only the highest military despots knew and kept to themselves. In a word—it was impregnable.
That such a place could not be trifled with or misunderstood in its right-and-acute-angled severities seemed plain to every one. But set on by his companions, who were showing him its defensive foundations, or in his own idle curiosity, Karl managed to fall into the Rhine and was fished out with difficulty. The immersion may have chilled his military ardor or soured his good humor, for later the consul heard that he had visited the American consular agent at an adjacent town with the old story of his American citizenship. “He seemed,” said the consul's colleague, “to be well posted about American railways and American towns, but he had no papers. He lounged around the office for a while and”—
“Wrote letters home?” suggested the consul, with a flash of reminiscence.
“Yes, the poor chap had no privacy at the barracks, and I reckon was overlooked or bedeviled.”
This was the last the consul heard of Karl Schwartz directly; for a week or two later he again fell into the Rhine, this time so fatally and effectually that in spite of the efforts of his companions he was swept away by the rapid current, and thus ended his service to his country. His body was never recovered.
A few months before the consul was transferred from Schlachtstadt to another post his memory of the departed Karl was revived by a visit from Adlerkreutz. The general looked grave.
“You remember Unser Karl?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Do you think he was an impostor?”
“As regards his American citizenship, yes! But I could not say more.”
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