The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek Page B

Emperor. And if it was your own father or your brother who was lying here, give 'em the clyster without turning a hair. Remember that Austria stands as firm as a rock on these clysters and victory is ours."
    On the next day when Dr. Grunstein came round he asked Schweik how he liked the military hospital.
    Sçhweik replied that it was a first-class and well-managed establishment. As a recompense for which he was given the same as on the day before, together with aspirin and three quinine pills, which he had to take in a glass of water there and then.
    But Socrates did not drink his cup of hemlock with such composure as Schweik the quinine. Dr. Grunstein now tried all the grades of torment on him.
    When Schweik was wrapped up in a wet sheet in the presence of the doctor, and the latter asked him how he liked it, he replied :
    "Beg to report, sir, that it's like being in a swimming bath or at the seaside."
    "Have you still got rheumatism?"
    "Beg to report, sir, that it doesn't seem to be getting any better, somehow."
    Schweik was subjected to fresh torments.
    Now about this time, the Baroness von Botzenheim, the widow
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    of an infantry general, took a lot of trouble to discover the soldier about whom the newspaper Bohemia had published an account of how he had, though a cripple, had himself wheeled along in a Bath chair and while in the Bath chair had shouted "To Belgrade!" which demonstration of patriotism had acted as an incentive to the editor of Bohemia to invite his readers to collect money for the benefit of the loyal and heroic cripple.
    At last, as the result of an inquiry at the police headquarter she ascertained that it was Schweik, and further inquiries were easy. The Baroness von Botzenheim, accompanied by her lady companion and a footman, proceeded to pay a visit to Schweik with a hamper of food.
    The poor baroness did not know what it meant when someone is in the infirmary ward of a military prison. Her visiting card opened all doors and in the office they treated her with extreme courtesy. Within five minutes she was told that "the brave soldier Schweik," for whom she was inquiring, could be found in hut No. 3, bed No. 17. Dr. Grunstein, who was flabbergasted at this turn of events, accompanied her in person.
    Schweik was just sitting on the bed after the usual daily moil prescribed by Dr. Grunstein, surrounded by a group of starved and emaciated malingerers, who had not yet given in and were stubbornly struggling with Dr. Grunstein upon the basis of absolute diet.
    Anyone listening to them would have had the impression that he was in the society of culinary experts, at an advanced school of cookery or at a course of training for gourmets.
    "Even plain hashed fat is eatable," one man was just saying— he was there for "chronic catarrh of the stomach"—"if it's warm. When the fat fries, you squeeze it out till it's dry, add salt and pepper and I tell you, hashed goose-fat isn't a patch on it."
    "That be blowed for a yarn," said a man with "cancer of the stomach," "there's nothing like hashed goose-fat. All your pork dripping and whatnot isn't in the same street with it ; of course, it's got to be fried till it's nice and brown, like the Jews do it. You take a fat goose, strip the fat with the skin and fry it."
    "You're all wrong in what you say about pork dripping," said Schweik's neighbour. "Of course, it stands to reason I'm talking
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    about home-made dripping. It's not brown and it's not golden. It's got to be something between the two. And it mustn't be too soft or too hard. It mustn't crackle, that's a sign it's overdone. It ought to melt on your tongue and make you feel as if your chin was being soaked with dripping."
    "Did any of you ever eat horse dripping?" inquired a strange voice, to which, however, nobody replied, because the N. C. O. of the medical corps came running in : "Get into bed all of you. There's an archduchess or somebody coming here and don't let anybody show his dirty feet under the