“Tell me how goes the war.”

“Rotten.”

“I don’t have to go. I’m too old, like Count Greffi.”

“Maybe you’ll have to go yet.”

“Next year they’ll call my class. But I won’t go.”

“What will you do?”

“Get out of the country. I wouldn’t go to war. I was at the war once in Abyssinia. Nix. Why do you go?”

“I don’t know. I was a fool.”

“Have another vermouth?”

“All right.”