"g152v10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ebers Georg)

colonel continued:

"You believe, no doubt, children, that no one ever came back from the
dead, and that therefore no mortal knows what Heaven looks like, nor
Hell. But I--look at me well--I can tell you something about it."

Here he made a short pause while my wife handed him his pipe and a match.
The children looked at one another in doubt and suspicion, for this was
the first story of the colonel which had not begun with, "Here I am," or,
"Once upon a time," and they were consequently uncertain whether it was a
true story or one that he had made up. Wolfgang, who is thirteen and my
oldest boy, and who already calls his younger brothers, "the young ones,"
--and promises to be a true child of the times, inclined to believe it
the latter, but even he sat up straighter and looked puzzled as the
colonel continued:

"The two balls that I have in here, and the sabre cut on my shoulder,--
but you know how and where I received them--to be brief, I sank from my
horse onto the grass in the afternoon, and not until the following
morning was I found by the ambulance corps and carried to the hospital.
There they brought me to life again. In the interim--which lasted for
the half of a day and one whole night--I was certainly not alive like one
of you, or any other two-legged creature endowed with five senses."

With these words his penetrating eyes glanced from Karl to Kurt; the
girls caught hold of one another's hands and one could plainly read in
their expressions that they considered it rash to be in such close
proximity to a person who had erstwhile been dead. It was fortunate for
them that the resuscitated colonel was so good, and that there was no
doubt about his actual existence, which was proved by his voice and the
smoke that he puffed into the air during every pause.

"Yes, children," he began anew, "a great wonder was worked on me, an old
man. This long body here lay on the bloody ground among groaning men,
dying horses, broken gun-carriages, ammunition wagons, exploded
bombshells, and discarded weapons; but my soul--I cannot have been too
hardened a sinner in this world--my soul was permitted to soar to
Heaven. One, two, three, as fast as you can say, 'That is an apple,' or
'The fair Ina has a pretty doll in her lap,' and it had arrived. And
now--I can see it in your eyes--you would like to know how it seems in
Heaven, and God knows I cannot blame you, for it is beautiful,
marvellously beautiful, only unfortunately I am not allowed even to
attempt its description. That must ever remain a mystery to the living
because--but that is no matter, and evil would befall me if I were
to chatter."

At this point the colonel was interrupted by many expressions of
disappointment, but he was resolute, and continued in a peremptory tone:

"That will do. Description indeed is forbidden to me; but there are