The visitor trotted behind him like a little dog and caught up with him when he went to buy some cigarettes at a tobacconist.
Now she walked beside him and tried to start a conversation with him.
'You'll really deliver it?'
'Of course I'll deliver it, if I said so.'
'And you're sure you'll find the lieutenant?'
'That I don't know.'
They walked side by side again in silence until after quite a long time his companion began to speak again:
'Do you think, then, that you won't find the lieutenant?'
'No, I don't think that.'
'And where do you think he might be?'
'I don't know.'
Then the conversation was interrupted for a long time until it was resumed once more by a question from the young lady:
'You haven't lost that letter?'
'I haven't lost it yet.'
'And so you'll be sure to give it to the lieutenant?'
'Yes.'
'And you'll find him?'
'I've already said I don't know,' answered Svejk.
'It amazes me how people can be so inquisitive and continually ask the same question.
It's just as though I stopped every second person on the street and asked them what was the date today.'
In this way her attempts to make a deal with Svejk came to a definite end and the rest of the journey to the barracks passed in complete silence.
It was only when they stopped at the barracks that Svejk invited the young lady to wait and started to chat with the soldiers at the gate about the war, which must have made the young lady awfully happy, because she walked up and down the pavement nervously and appeared extremely miserable when she saw that Svejk was persisting in his talk, with just as stupid'an expression on his face as could be seen on the photograph published at that time in the World War Chronicle under the headline:
'The Heir to the Austrian throne in conversation with the two pilots who shot down a Russian aeroplane'.
Svejk sat down on a bench at the gate and explained that on the Carpathian battle front the army's attack had failed, but on the other hand the commander of Przemysl, General Kusmanek, had reached Kiev and that behind us in Serbia there remained eleven bases and that the Serbs would soon be too tired to go on running after our troops.
And then he started criticizing certain famous battles and made the truly Archimedean discovery that a detachment has to give itself up when it is encircled on all sides.
When he had been talking long enough, he thought it right to go out and tell the desperate lady that he would be back again at once, and that she shouldn't go anywhere.
Then he went upstairs to the office, where he found Lieutenant Lukas, who was just at that moment solving for a subaltern a trenches exercise and was reproaching him for not being able to draw and for having no idea at all about geometry.
'Look, this is how you have to draw it.
If on a given straight line we have to draw a perpendicular line, we must draw it so that it makes a right angle with it.
Do you understand?
If you do it this way, you will have your trenches running in the right direction and not in the direction of the enemy. You will be six hundred metres away from him.
But the way you've drawn it you'd be pushing our positions into the enemy's line and you'd be standing with your trenches perpendicular over the enemy, whereas you need an obtuse angle.
It's really quite simple after all, isn't it?'
And the lieutenant in reserve, who in civil life was a bank cashier, stood in complete despair over these plans.
He could not understand anything and heaved a sigh of relief when Svejk advanced towards the lieutenant:
'Humbly report, sir, a lady sends you this letter and is waiting for an answer.'
And as he said this he gave a knowing and familiar wink.
What the lieutenant read did not make a favourable impression on him. It was written in German.
Dear Heinrich, My husband is persecuting me.
I absolutely must stay a few days with you.
Your batman is a proper swine.
I am unhappy.
Your Katy.
Lieutenant Lukas sighed, took Svejk into an empty office next door, shut the door and began to walk up and down between the tables.
When he finally stopped by Svejk he said:
'The lady writes that you're a swine.
What on earth have you done to her?'
'I haven't done anything to her, humbly report, sir.
I've behaved very respectably, but she wanted to install herself in the apartment at once.
And because I had not had any orders from you I didn't leave her alone there.