'The Turks are holding well,' replied the lieutenant, leading him to the table again.
'The President of the Turkish parliament, Hali Bej, and Ali Bej have come to Vienna.
Marshal Liman von Sanders has been appointed commander of the Turkish Dardanelles army.
Goltz Pasha has just come from Constantinople to Berlin, and Enver Pasha, Vice Admiral Used om Pasha and General Dzevad Pasha have been decorated by our Emperor.
This is a fairly considerable number of decorations in such a short time.'
They all sat in silence opposite each other, until the lieutenant considered it appropriate to interrupt the embarrassing situation with the words:
'When did you arrive, Mr Wendler?'
'This morning.'
'I'm very glad that you found me at home, because in the afternoon I always go to the barracks and I have night duty.
Because my flat is actually empty the whole day I have been able to offer madame hospitality.
She is not troubled by anyone during her stay in Prague.
Being an old acquaintance .. .'
The hop-merchant gave a cough:
'Katy is certainly a strange woman, lieutenant.
Please accept my warmest thanks for everything which you've done for her.
She took it into her head to go to Prague out of the blue, because, so she said, she had to take a cure for her nerves.
I was away, I came home and found the house empty.
Katy had gone.'
Trying to put on as agreeable an expression as possible he shook his finger at her and asked her with a forced smile:
'And so you thought, did you, that when I was travelling you could travel too?
Of course you didn't realize ...
Lieutenant Lukas, seeing that the conversation was taking an awkward turn, led the intelligent hop-merchant back to the map of the battlefields again and showed him places which had been underlined, saying:
'I forgot to point out to you one very interesting circumstance this great bend which is facing south-west, where this group of mountains forms a major bridgehead.
It is just against this spot that the Allies' offensive is directed.
By closing this railway line, which links the bridgehead with the enemy's main defence line, communication between the right flank and the Northern Army on the Vistula must be broken.
Is that quite clear to you now?'
The hop-merchant answered that everything was quite clear to him and fearing with his natural tact that what he said might be taken up as a hint he mentioned on returning to his place:
'During the war our hops have lost their markets abroad.
France, England, Russia and the Balkans are now lost for hops.
We're still sending hops to Italy but I'm afraid that Italy will get drawn into it soon.
But when we've won it'll be we who will dictate the prices for our goods.'
'Italy is keeping strictly neutral,' the lieutenant said to him to cheer him up.
'She's .. .'
'Then why doesn't she admit that she's bound by the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany?' the hop-merchant suddenly burst out in anger. His head became suddenly full of everything-hops, his wife, the war.
'I expected that Italy would march against France and Serbia.
The war would then have been over.
The hops in my stores are rotting, in the home market trade is poor, export amounts to nothing, and Italy is keeping strictly neutral.
Why did Italy renew her Triple Alliance with us in 1912?
Where is the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Marquis of San Giuliano?
What's that gentleman doing?
Is he asleep or what?
Do you know what annual turnover I had before the war and what I have now?
'You mustn't think that I don't follow events,' he continued. He looked furiously at the lieutenant, who was calmly blowing from his mouth rings of cigarette smoke which caught and broke each other up while Mrs Katy followed the operation with close interest.
'Why did the Germans go back to the frontier, when they'd already been near Paris?
Why is such heavy gunfire going on again between the Maas and Moselle?
Do you know that at Combres and Woewre near the Marche three breweries have been burnt down, where we used to send every year more than five hundred sacks of hops?
And in the Vosges the Hartmansweiler brewery has burnt down and the enormous brewery in Niederaspach near Miilhausen has been razed to the ground.
That means the loss of twelve hundred sacks of hops for my firm every year.
Six times the Germans have fought the Belgians for the Klosterhoek brewery. There you have a loss of 350 sacks of hops a year.'
He was so furious that he couldn't go on speaking, but only stood up, advanced towards his wife and said: