'Take off your boots and trousers!
Come on! ... ' And so it happened that the good soldier Svejk could report to the lieutenant when he returned from the barracks:
'Humbly report, sir, I've fulfilled all the lady's wishes and served her decently according to your orders.'
'Thank you, Svejk,' replied the lieutenant.
'And did she have lots of wishes?'
'About six,' answered Svejk.
'And now she is sleeping as though quite exhausted by the ride.
I did obey her slightest whim, sir.'
V
While masses of armies, pinned to the forests by the Dunajec and the Raab, stood under a rain of shells, and artillery of heavy calibre was tearing to pieces whole companies and burying them in the Carpathians, and while the horizons on all the battlefields blazed with burning villages and towns, Lieutenant Lukas and Svejk went through an unpleasant idyll with the lady who had run away from her husband and had now made herself mistress of the house.
When she went out for a walk Lieutenant Lukas held a council of war with Svejk on how to get rid of her.
'It would be best, sir,' said Svejk, 'if her husband, who she's run away from and who's looking for her, as you said was stated in the letter which I brought you, got to know where she was and came to fetch her away.
We could send him a telegram that she's with you and that he could come and fetch her.
There was a similar case last year in a villa in Vsenory.
But then the telegram was sent to the husband by the wife herself, and he came for her and boxed them both across the ears.
Then they happened to be both civilians but in this present case the husband wouldn't dare to assault an officer. Besides, you're not guilty at all, because you never invited anybody, and when she ran away from home she did it at her own risk.
You'll see that a telegram like that'll do a power of good.
Even if there are a few swipes across the jaw .. '
'He's very intelligent,' Lieutenant Lukas interrupted him. 'I know him.
He's a wholesaler in hops.
I must definitely speak to him.
I'll send a telegram.'
The telegram he sent was very laconic and commercial:
'The present address of your wife is .. .' Then followed the address of Lieutenant Lukas's apartment.
And so it happened that Mrs Katy had a very unpleasant surprise when the hop-merchant burst in through the door.
He looked very circumspect and careful when Mrs Katy, who did not lose her composure at this moment, introduced both gentlemen to each other:
'My husband - Lieutenant Lukas.'
She couldn't think of anything else.
'Please sit down, Mr Wendler,' Lieutenant Lukas said in a welcoming tone and took a cigarette case from his pocket. 'May I offer you one?'
The intelligent hop-merchant took a cigarette with great propriety and puffing smoke from his mouth said in measured tones:
'Will you soon be going to the front, lieutenant?'
'I've applied to be transferred to the grst regiment at Budejovice, where I shall probably be sent as soon as I have finished the one-year volunteers' training school.
We need a lot of officers and it is an unhappy feature of the situation today that young people who are qualified to be accepted as one-year volunteers don't apply for it.
They prefer to remain ordinary infantrymen rather than try to become cadets.'
'The war has inflicted considerable damage on the hop trade, but I don't think it can last long,' remarked the hop-merchant, looking now at his wife and now at the lieutenant.
'Our situation is very good,' said Lieutenant Lukas.
'Today no one doubts any longer that the war will end in a victory of the Central Powers.
France, England and Russia are too weak against the Austro-Turco-German granite.
It's true that we have suffered some small reverses on some fronts.
But as soon as we break through the Russian front between the Carpathian ridge and the middle Dunajec, there's no doubt at all that it will mean the end of the war.
And the French too will very soon be threatened with the loss of the whole of Eastern France and the penetration of the German army into Paris.
That's now quite certain.
Apart from that our manoeuvres in Serbia continue very successfully, and the departure of our troops, which is in fact only a redeployment, has been misinterpreted by many people in a way which is in complete conflict with what cool reason demands in time of war.
We shall very soon see that our well-calculated manoeuvres on the southern front are bearing fruit.
Please look here.'
Lieutenant Lukas took the hop-merchant gently by the arm, led him to a map of the battlefields which was hanging on the wall and showed him certain points, explaining:
'The Eastern Beskyds arc an excellent base for us.
As you can see here we have great support in the Carpathian sector.
If we make a powerful strike on this line we shan't stop until we're in Moscow. The war will end before we think.'
'And what about Turkey?' asked the hop-merchant, thinking all the time how he could come to the point which he had come for.