At these words she looked at me as coldly as if she had become an alabaster statue.
"So I believe. On the 20th instant there was a battle on the Mincio, at which your husband distinguished himself."
("Really?"--In that tone? It was rather odd. However, I went on.)
"Nay, in the heat of the combat he was even wounded."
(I calculated surely on the dramatic effect of these words. I fancied that the tender spouse would leap to her feet, pale, ready to faint, wringing her hands, till at last, amidst sobs, the name of the adored husband would burst forth from her lips: "Oh! my Wenceslaus! Oh! my Kvatopil!" But she did not so much as turn her head round.)
"Indeed?" she said, with complete _sangfroid_.
Just as if it were an every-day occurrence for a beloved husband to be wounded in battle.
I was offended. Such ungrateful indifference I had never met with before. How was I to go on? I had calculated that when the despairing consort had wept and sobbed her fill, I should hasten to console her.
"It is true," said I, "that his wound is not sufficiently dangerous to prevent him from continuing in the field."
"I can easily believe it," replied the lady, with a shrug of the shoulders.
Now this was a want of feeling worthy of an alligator! Surely she had the nerves of a rhinoceros! I was not prepared for this reception. "I can easily believe it!" Was that all?
Well, then, if our tender feelings are so hermetically sealed, we must try what more drastic means will do. We must appeal to other sentiments. Vanity, for instance, is a sentiment which never can be blunted.
"Lieutenant Kvatopil," I said, "was called to the front and made a captain straight off for heroic valour in the field."
But even at this the lovely lady did not fling herself on my neck. She did not even utter a sound, but contracted the corners of her mouth. What did that mean? When you tell a lieutenant's wife that from to-day she has a right to the title Mrs. Captain; that every one who meets her in the street and congratulates her will address her as, "Frau Rittmeisterin," while the other lieutenants' wives naturally burn with secret envy; that she may now print her corresponding rank on her visiting cards--when you tell her all this, and even then no impression is produced, and the cherry lips do _not_ expand with joy, revealing the sparkling, pearly teeth and the dimples on the sunbright face; when, instead of that, she purses up her mouth so nastily and gives herself a double chin--what _are_ you to think? There is nothing so hideous as a pretty woman with a double chin. A double chin makes a woman look absolutely old.