Page:H.M. The Patrioteer.djvu/38

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THE PATRIOTEER

lations, once bumped into him at the door of the lavatory, and although both of them were in a great hurry, neither would take precedence over the other. For a long time they stood bowing and scraping—until suddenly overcome by the same need at the same moment, they burst through the door, charging like two wild boars, and knocked their shoulders together. That was the, beginning of a friendship. Having come together in such human circumstances, they drew nearer also at the official beer-table, drank one another's health and called each other "pig-dog" and "hippopotamus."

The life of the students' corps had also its tragicjside. It demanded sacrifices and taught them to suffer pain and grief with a manly bearing. Delitzsch himself, the source of so much merriment, brought bereavement to the Neo-Teutons. One morning when Wiebel and Diederich came to fetch him, he was standing at his washstand and he said: "Well, are you as thirsty to-day as ever?" Suddenly, before they could reach him he fell down, bringing the crockery with him. Wiebel felt him all over, but Delitzsch did not move again.

"Heart failure," said Wiebel shortly. He walked firmly to the bell. Diederich picked up the broken pieces and dried the floor. Then they carried Delitzsch to his bed. They maintained a strictly disciplined attitude in the face of the landlady's vulgar tears. As they proceeded to attend to the usual formalities—they were marching in step—Wiebel said with stoical contempt for death: "that might have happened to any of us. Drinking is no joke. We should always remember that." Like the others, Diederich felt elevated by Delitzsch's faithful devotion to duty, by his death on the field of honour. They proudly followed the coffin, and every face seemed to say: "The Neo-Teutons for ever!" In the churchyard, with their swords lowered, they all wore the reflective expression of the warrior whose turn may come in the next battle, as his comrade's had come in the one before. And when the leader praised the deceased, who had won the highest prize in the