Pages 197-198

This Month's Installment

I was sick for about a week and haven't caught up yet, so this is a bit shorter than normal.

    On the parsonage the white flag with the red cross waved widely visible.  For the few

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wounded, who had arrived here until now and were willingly taken care of by Hanna and the district nurse, the large room was enough temporarily, along with a smaller one that had been set up on the first floor.  Only later, when the number increased, should the school house be taken for help, which was near the parsonage, separated only by the garden.

    Between the large garden veranda and the pipeleaf arbor, where the sun had the most free access, stood a comfortable deckchair, and on it rested a wounded officer in his field uniform, the large, gray coat spread over his feet.

    "The healing proceeds more quickly than I assumed.  Indeed, it happens more often with this sort of injury where no bone is affected; the arm is also coming along well."

    Doctor Robinson, resident district physician in Pronitten, a figure of Herculean physique, whose chief characteristics - energy and childlike goodnaturedness - one read immediately by sight, said it half to Fritz, half turning to the old pastor who stood on the head side of the wounded and read the words from the physician's lips.

    "That is good news that you bring me, Doctor!  Then I can go back to my unit on the quickest way and need not lie here on the bearskin."

    "Well, you will indeed not have it quite so quickly, Captain."

Pages 196-197

This Month's Installment

What's italicized is what I'm unsure about.

But I say to myself:  only while we at that time in the quiet of peacetime cared for the spiritual things, while we with earnest zeal planted moral and religious strengths in the souls, we made our people strong in order to lift ourselves now to such a unanimous magnificence that we give strength to the one staying behind to build the places of culture and of love in the midst of a destructive war."

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    He remained standing, as if he expected that she would finally say something to him, only one word to break the ice that lay between them.  She raised her head from the ground; a faint wince ran over her lips.  But she stayed silent; the released word did not fall.

    They had continued on the way and reached their destination.  Edith disappeared into the interior of the large parish hall, and he trod the path to the city military hospital.  But his thoughts were with her and with that which they had just spoken with one an-other.

    There is something in her that is not to be broken, he said to himself, a pride or perhaps a reserve that will never concede that she is wrong.  Even all her suffering and the difficult time change nothing about it.  What actually changes a person!? - Thus we will probably disperse ourselves into all eternity!

    Full and warm lay the sun of the later summer over the Pronitter parish garden.  She spread her beaming hands over the paths and lawns; she broke through with attractive seeking in every thicket, on every patch; she played with golden lights on every tree trunk there, sat pleasantly on every full, dark leaf, took the weary ones gliding to earth in her soft arms, and sunned the dying yet with their brilliance; she filled everything with peace and with pleasure.  It was as if there in the great, wide world, there was nothing else but light and brightness, as if the heavy war, which played out here in the nearest vicinity, was only a pressing dream out of which one was now awakened to a new, beautiful day.

This is the end of chapter thirty-five and the beginning of chapter thirty-six.