Now, all this proves only, that I was then an inexperienced youth of 21, easy of belief, and superficial. If I tell you that I was a musician (I do not say: I _am_; I say: I _was_) you will understand my character altogether.
I had to interrupt my history. Our Father which is in the War Office had sent us our daily jam. I wonder whether my pretty Austrian officer, whom I first saw eight years ago at the Salzburg railway station, is still alive, and whether he has jam, too? And whether he thinks of me as I do of him, and whether he remembers that Sunday afternoon when he put her, my Austrian love, in my railway carriage?
She was sitting there, looking out of the window. It was now a quarter of an hour since we had left Salzburg, and the train had got on its even, rapid pace that it would keep up for the afternoon.
I did not dare to speak to my fair Comtesse. This was the rank which my imagination had given her. If, when travelling, you do not start a conversation at once, you generally never will. So I fretted. I had nothing to read, not even a paper. I did not want to sleep, besides, I never could sleep on a train. As for her, she hardly moved.
Thus another quarter of an hour had passed, when the conductor, opening the door of the corridor, asked for our tickets. I could not help feeling surprised when I saw the man, for he looked somewhat like a twin brother of the little Frenchman. He was of the same size, had the same black hair, the same black moustache and pointed tuft of beard on his chin. It was so striking that my English brain, brought up chiefly on detective stories, smelt at once a mystery. I could not refrain from stepping out with him on to the corridor where, in order to make certain whether the little Frenchman and the conductor were but one person, I asked him what the next stop was. He answered and began chatting. It was quite another voice and, while my Frenchman spoke German only with great difficulty, this conductor gave me an example of the volubility with which the Viennese people speak their broad, good-humoured dialect. The mystery was only chance.
"A nice girl," said the man smiling and blinking with his eyes half closed in the direction of the Comtesse.