"I had to report this morning for military service, just having got back to Dresden. So I went to the Platz and there sat an officer as big as a hogshead. And I hope not as full. He began treating me as if I were a truant school boy. 'Stand up! Sit down! Stand up again!' So the examination commenced. I knew I was not fit for the army. I did not want to go. I hate it. But they were after me. He said: "'Take off your glasses!' I removed them. He said: "'What is that letter off there?' Mein Gott! it looked as far off as Pillnitz. It was my left eye out of which I had seen nothing since I was a baby. "'I see nothing,' I said. He yelled: "'You can!' Then I said: "'I can't!' Then he roared out: "'Why can't you?' "'Because I am blind in it!' He glared at me as if I were a perjurer. "'It is blind and you can see nothing out of it?' "And now I was getting out of patience with this blockhead. Blind and can't see out of it! They put the blockheads in the army because there is no other place for them. I think that must be the reason why there are more synonyms for blockhead in the German language than in any other--we have the largest army. I said: "'Of course I can't see anything out of it because it's blind, you---- ' I was just on the point of adding 'fool' when I stopped myself in time. It was the military--the august _military_. One must hold his peace before the magnificent military. He thought I was cheating about my eye because I did not want to march to Moscow, to Paris. And I don't want to march to Moscow or Paris. They're so far. "So this stupid _Kerl_ took me over to a higher officer and still another. They sat there as stiff and self-complacent as wooden saints in a plaster church. They too shouted at me They were so suspicious, although I had never had the pleasure of meeting any of them before. "'You say you are blind in one eye and can't see out of it?' "I screamed, 'No, no, no!' They thought I might be going insane. They examined my eye, my glasses, and tried all kinds of tests to try to fool my poor eye. But it remained my faithful friend, and they were mad. And I was just as mad and ready to shriek at them--'Blind! Blind! Blind!' I was losing half a day for nothing over their stupidities. "Then the _Dummkopfen_ began to enter it up on their official blotters. That seemed to take forever too. I was nearly exhausted. They solemnly wrote me down as blind in one eye and cannot see out of it. And at last, Gott sei Dank! they let me go, glowering at me as if they were still sure I was somehow tricking them. And here I am--alive!" Friedrich's ludicrous recital, embellished by a hundred gestures and poses, had raised a guffaw even in Villa Elsa. Chapter XVI A LIVELY MUSICIAN Gard discovered that such mockery or berating of military officials, with whom the ordinary public came in servile contact, was rather common in Germany in spite of the universal adoration of the army.