_Serious mental illness, consequent on my husband’s death.--This
recurs occasionally.--Conclusion of my diary.--Additions to “The
Protocol of Peace”.--Progress of the Peace movement.--Mr. Hodgson
Pratt’s letter.--The Emperor Frederick’s manifesto.--I write the
last word of my autobiography.--My grandson’s christening.--My
daughter’s engagement.--Rudolf’s speech at the christening.--“Hail
to the Future!”--Finis._
When for the first time I came to myself again peace had been concluded
and the Commune was over. I had been in bed for a month ill, nursed by
my faithful Mrs. Anna, without any consciousness of being alive. And
what the illness was I know not to the present day. The people about me
called it considerately “typhus,” but I believe that it was
simply--madness.
So much I darkly recall, that the last interval had been filled with
imaginations of crackling shots and blazing conflagrations; probably the
events which were spoken of in my presence mingled in my phantasy with
the truth, the battles, that is, between the Versaillese and the
Communards, and the incendiary fires of the Petroleuses. That, when I
recovered my reason and with it the knowledge of my deep misery, I did
not do myself some harm, or the pang did not kill me, probably was due
to my possession of my children. Through them I could, for them I was
forced, to live. Even before my illness, on the very day when that
terrible thing broke over me, Rudolf kept me alive. I was shrieking
aloud, on my knees, while I repeated: “Die! Die! I must die!” Then two
arms embraced me, and a praying, painfully solemn, lovely boy’s face
was looking at me--“Mother!”
Up to that time I had never been called by my boy anything but “Mamma”.
His using at this moment, for the first time, the word “Mother” said to
me, in those two syllables: “You are not alone; you have a son who
shares your pain, who loves and honours you above all things, who has no
one in this world except you. Do not abandon your child, Mother!”
I pressed the dear creature to my heart, and to show him that I had
understood him, I too faltered out: “My son, my son!”
At the same time I recollected my girl, _his_ girl, and my resolution to
live was fixed. But the pain was too intolerable. I fell into
intellectual darkness; and not at this time only. For the space of
years, at ever-increasing intervals, I remained subject to recurring
attacks of abstraction, of which afterwards in the state of health
absolutely no recollection remained to me. Now for several years I have
been free from them. Free, that is, from the insensibility of my spirit
pangs, but not from conscious attacks of the bitterest pain of soul.
Eighteen years have gone since the 1st of February, 1871, but the deep
resentment and the deep mourning, which the tragedy of that day awoke in
me, no time can remove, even should I live a hundred years. Even though
in these later times the days come ever more frequently in which I,
absorbed in the events of the present, do not think about the misery of
the past, in which I even sympathise so livelily with the joy of my
children as to feel myself also filled with something like joy in my
life, yet no night passes, _no, not one_, in which my wretchedness does
not seize on me. That is something quite peculiar, something thing I can
hardly describe, and which only those will understand who have
experienced something similar themselves. It appears to me like a kind
of double life of the soul. Although the _single_ consciousness in the
waking condition can sometimes be so taken possession of by the things
of the outer world that it from time to time forgets, yet in the depths
of my personality there is a _second_ consciousness still which always
retains that awful recollection with the same true pain; and that self,
when the other has gone to sleep, asserts itself, and rouses the other
up, as it were, to share its pain with it. Every night, and it must be
at the same hour, I wake with an indescribable feeling of pain. My heart
contracts painfully, and I feel as if forced to weep bitter tears and
utter sighs of agony. This lasts a few seconds, without my awakened self
quite knowing why the other unhappy self is so unhappy. The next stage
after this is a compassion embracing the whole world, and a sigh, full
of the most painful pity: “Oh you poor, poor men!” And then I see next
shrieking shapes which are being torn to pieces by a rain of murderous
shot, and then I recollect that my dearest love too was so torn in
pieces.
But in my dreams, wonderful to relate, I never knew anything of my loss.
Thus it happened often that I was speaking to Frederick and conversing
with him as during his life. Whole scenes from the past were
represented, but never any sad ones, our meeting again after
Schleswig-Holstein, our jokes over Sylvia’s cradle, our walking tours in
Switzerland, our hours of study over favourite books, and occasionally
that same picture in the evening light, where my white-haired husband
with his garden-shears was pruning the rose-branches, and was saying
with a smile to me: “Are we not a happy old couple?”
I have never put off my mourning, not even at my son’s wedding. When any
one has loved, possessed, and lost such a husband, and lost him as I
did, her love “must be stronger than death,” her passion for vengeance
can never cool. But whom does this anger threaten? On whom would I
execute vengeance? The men who did the deed were not in fault. The only
guilty party is the _spirit of war_, and it is on this that my work of
persecution, all too weak as it is, must be exercised.
My son Rudolf agrees with my views, though this of course does not
prevent him from going through his military exercises every year, and
could not prevent him, either, from marching to the frontier, if the
European war, which is always hanging over our heads, should break out.
And then, perhaps, I shall have once more to see how all that is dearest
to me in the world has to be sacrificed on the altar of Moloch, how a
hearth blessed with love, and which is the sign to my old age of all its
rest and peace, has to be laid in ruins. Shall I have to see all this
once more, and then once more to fall into irrecoverable madness, or
shall I yet behold the triumph of justice and humanity, which now, at
this very moment, is striving for accomplishment in widely extended
associations and in all strata of society?
The red volumes, my diary, contain no further entries. Under the date
February 1, 1871, I marked a great cross, and so closed the history of
my life also. Only the so-called _Protocol_, a blue volume which
Frederick began along with me and in which we described the phases of
the idea of peace, has been since that time enriched with a few notes.
In the first years which succeeded the Franco-German war, I had few
opportunities, even apart from my diseased condition of mind, for
marking any tidings of peace. The two most influential nations on the
Continent were revelling in thoughts of war; the one proudly looking
back on the victories she had gained, the other longingly expecting her
impending revenge. The current of these feelings gradually began to
subside. On this side of the Rhine the statues of Germania were a little
less shouted over, and on that side those of Strasbourg decked with
fewer mourning-wreaths. Then, after ten years, the voice of the servants
of peace might again be heard. It was Bluntschli, the great professor of
international law, the same with whom my lost one had put himself in
communication, who set to work to obtain the views of various
dignitaries and Governments on the subject of national peace. And then
the silent “thinker-out of battles” let fall the well-known expression:
“Everlasting peace is a dream, and not a pretty dream either”.
“Oh, of course,” I wrote at the time in my blue book, beside Moltke’s
words, “if Luther had asked the Pope what he thought of the revolt from
Rome, the answer he would have received would not have been very
favourable to the Reformation.” To-day there is hardly any one left who
has not dreamed this dream, or who would not confess its beauty. And
there are watchers too; watchers conspicuous enough, who are longing to
awake mankind out of the long sleep of savagery, and energetically and
with a single eye to their object collecting themselves for the purpose
of planting the white flag. Their battle-cry is, “War on War,” their
watchword, the only word which can have power to deliver from ruin
Europe armed against herself is, “Lay down your arms”. In all places, in
England and France, in Italy, in the northern countries, in Germany, in
Switzerland, in America, associations have been formed, whose object is,
through the compulsion of public opinion, through the commanding
pressure of the people’s will, to move the Governments to submit their
differences in future to an Arbitration Court, appointed by themselves,
and so once for all to enthrone justice in place of brute force. That
this is no dream, no “enthusiasm,” is proved by the facts that the
questions of the Alabama, the Caroline Islands, and several others have
already been settled in this manner. And it is not only people without
power or position, like the poor blacksmith of a former time, who are
now co-operating in this work of peace; no, members of parliament,
bishops, professors, senators, ministers are inscribed on the lists. I
know all this (which is unknown to most people), because I have kept in
communication with all those persons, with whom Frederick established
relations in the pursuit of his noble aim. What I found out, by means of
these persons, about the successes and the designs of the peace
societies has been duly entered in _The Protocol of Peace_. The last of
these entries is the following letter which the president of the
International Arbitration and Peace Association, having its headquarters
in London, wrote me in answer to an inquiry bearing on this subject:--
“INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION AND PEACE ASSOCIATION,
“LONDON, 41 OUTER TEMPLE, _July, 1889_.
“Madam,--You have honoured me by inquiring as to the actual
position of the great question to which you have devoted your life.
Here is my answer: At no time, perhaps, in the history of the world
has the cause of peace and good-will been more hopeful. It seems
that, at last, the long night of death and destruction will pass
away; and we who are on the mountain-top of humanity think that we
see the first streaks of the dawn of the kingdom of Heaven upon
earth. It may seem strange that we should say this at a moment when
the world has never seen so many armed men and such frightful
engines of destruction ready for their accursed work; but when
things are at their worst they begin to mend. Indeed, the very ruin
which these armies are bringing in their train produces universal
consternation; and soon the oppressed peoples must rise and with
one voice say to their rulers: ‘Save us, and save our children from
the famine which awaits us, if these things continue; save
civilisation and all the triumphs which the efforts of wise and
great men have accomplished in its name; save the world from a
return to barbarism, rapine and terror!’
“‘What indications,’ do you ask, ‘are there of such a dawn of a
better day?’ Well, let me ask in reply, is not the recent meeting
at Paris of the representatives of one hundred societies for the
declaration of international concord, for the substitution of a
state of law and justice for that of force and wrong, an event
unparalleled in history? Have we not seen men of many nations
assembled on this occasion and elaborating, with enthusiasm and
unanimity, practical schemes for this great end? Have we not seen,
for the first time in history, a Congress of Representatives of the
parliaments of free nations declaring in favour of treaties being
signed by all civilised states, whereby they shall bind themselves
to defer their differences to the arbitrament of equity, pronounced
by an authorised tribunal instead of a resort to wholesale murder?
“Moreover, these representatives have pledged themselves to meet
every year in some city of Europe, in order to consider every case
of misunderstanding or conflict, and to exercise their influence
upon Governments in the cause of just and pacific settlements.
Surely, the most hopeless pessimist must admit that these are signs
of a future when war shall be regarded as the most foolish and most
criminal blot upon man’s record?
“Dear madam, accept the expression of my profound esteem.
“Yours truly,
“HODGSON PRATT.”
There is also to be found in the blue book the manifesto of a prince,
dated March, 1888, a manifesto from which at last, breaking with old
usage, instead of a warlike a peaceful spirit shines forth. But the
noble one, who left these words to his people, the dying one, who with
the last effort of his strength grasped the sceptre which he would have
swayed as if it had been a palm branch, remained helplessly chained to
his bed of pain, and after a short interval all was over.
* * * * *
“Mother, will you not put your mourning off for the day after
to-morrow?”
Rudolf came into my room with these words to-day. For the christening of
his first-born son is fixed for the day after to-morrow.
“No, my dear,” I replied.
“But think; at such a festival you surely will not be mournful. Why then
keep the outer signs of mourning?”
“And you will not be superstitious, and fear that the black dress of the
grandmother will bring bad luck to the child?”
“Oh no; but it does not harmonise with the surrounding gaiety. Have you
then sworn an oath?”
“No; it is only a firm resolution. But a resolution linked to such a
memory--you know my meaning--that it partakes of the inviolability of an
oath.”
My son bowed his head, and did not urge me further.
“I have interrupted you in what you were about--you were writing?”
“Yes--my autobiography. God be praised, it is at an end. That was the
last chapter.”
“But how can you bring your history to an end? For you are still alive,
and will live many years yet--many happy years--amongst us, mother.
Surely with the birth of my little Frederick, whom I will bring up to
adore his grandmamma, a new chapter must be opening for you.”
“You are a good child, dear Rudolf. I should be unthankful if I did not
take pride and joy in you; and just as much joy does my--and
_his_--beautiful Sylvia give me. Oh yes! I am reserved for a blessed old
age. A quiet evening! But still, the history of the day is over when the
sun has set, is it not?”
He concurred with a silent look of compassion.
“Yes, the word ‘Finis’ at the end of my biography is correct. When I
made the resolve to write it, I also determined to break off at February
1, 1871. Only in the case of your being torn from me also by war, which
might indeed so easily have happened; but by good luck you were not of
age for service at the time of the Bosnian campaign--only in that case
would I have been forced to prolong my book. Still, even as it is, it
was pain enough to write it.”
“And possibly, too, it may be painful to read it,” remarked Rudolf,
turning over the leaves of the MS.
“I hope so. If that pain should only awake in a few hearts an energetic
hatred against the source of all the misery here described, I shall not
have put myself to the torture in vain.”
“Do you not fear one thing? Its purpose may be seen, and people so be
put out of humour with it.”
“That can only happen with a purpose which is perceived, but which the
author has tried cunningly to conceal. Mine, however, lies exposed to
the light--it is announced in plain words at the first glance on the
title-page.”
July, 1889. The christening came off yesterday. It was turned into a
festival promising twofold happiness: for my daughter Sylvia, the
godmother of her little nephew, and his godfather, whom we had long
cherished secretly in our hearts--Count Anton Delnitzky--took this
opportunity to announce their engagement.
And thus I am surrounded on all hands with happy relations, by means of
my children. Rudolf, who has six years since come into possession of the
Dotzky estate, and has been for four years married to Beatrix _née_
Griesbach, who had been intended for him since childhood--the most
lovely creature that can be imagined--sees now his most ardent wish
fulfilled by the birth of an heir. In short, an enviable, brilliant
destiny.
The christening guests assembled at a dinner in the summer-house. The
glass doors were left open, and the air of the summer noon streamed in,
laden with the scent of the roses.
Next me, in our circle, sat Countess Lori Griesbach, Beatrix’s mother.
She was now a widow. Her husband fell in the Bosnian expedition. She did
not take her loss very deeply to heart. In no case would _she_ wear
continual mourning. On the contrary, this time she had put on garnet-red
brocade, with brilliant jewels. She had remained just as superficial as
she was in her youth. Questions of toilette, one or two fashionable
French or English romances, and society chatter--that was always
sufficient to fill her horizon. Even coquetting she had not entirely
given up. She no longer had designs on young folks, but older personages
endowed with high rank or high position were not safe from her appetite
for conquest. At this time, as it seemed to me, Minister To-be-sure was
her mark. The latter had, besides, changed his name--and so we called
him now Minister T’other-side, from his new catch-word.
“I must make a confession to you,” Lori said to me as I clinked my glass
with hers to the health of the baby. “On this solemn occasion when we
have been christening the grandson of each of us, I must unburden my
conscience before you. I was quite seriously in love with your husband.”
“_That_ you have often confessed to me, dear Lori.”
“But he always remained quite indifferent.”
“That, too, I knew.”
“Well, you had a husband true as steel, Martha. I could not say as much
for mine. But none the less for that, I was very sorry about Griesbach.
Well, he died a glorious death; that is one comfort. A widow’s life is
truly a tedious one; especially as one grows older. As long as there are
treats, and people to pay court to you, widowhood is not devoid of ...
but now I assure you, one is quite melancholy all alone. With you the
case is rather different. You live with your son; but I am not at all
anxious to live with Beatrix. And she, too, is not anxious for it. The
mother-in-law in the house does not do well; for after all one likes to
be mistress at home. Servants certainly are a plague--that is very
true--still one can at least give them their orders. You will hardly
believe me, but I should not feel very much averse to marrying again. A
marriage of reason, of course, and with some sedate----”
“Minister, or something of that sort,” I interposed smiling.
“Oh, you sly creature! You have seen through me again! But just look
there! Do you not notice how Toni Delnitzky is talking to your Sylvia?
It is really quite compromising.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. Godfather and godmother made it up between them
on their way from church. Sylvia has confided it to me. To-morrow the
young man will come to me to ask her hand.”
“What do you say? Well, you _are_ to be congratulated. The handsome Toni
may no doubt have been a little gay from time to time; but they are all
that--that cannot be otherwise--and when one thinks what a good
match----”
“My Sylvia has never thought of that. She loves him.”
“Well, so much the better; that is a fine addition to a wedding.”
“An addition? It is all in all.”
One of the guests--an imperial and royal colonel on the retired
list--tapped his glass and: “Oh dear, a toast,” most of them probably
thought, as they broke off their separate talk, and, sighing, set
themselves to listen to the speaker; and it was something to sigh for.
The unhappy man stuck in his speech three times, and his choice of a
wish to offer to us was not less unfortunate. The infant was
congratulated on being born at a time when the country was about soon to
employ the services of her sons, and: “May he one day use his sword
gloriously, as his maternal great-grandfather and as his paternal
grandfather did; and may he himself bring up many sons who in their turn
may do honour to their father and their ancestors, and like so many of
those who have fallen--their ancestors--ancestors--for the honour of the
land of their ancestors--their ancestors and the ancestors of their
ancestors--conquer or---- In a word, the health of Frederick Dotzky!”
The glasses clinked, but the speech had not warmed us. That this being,
only just come into life, should already be entered on the death-roll of
future battles did not make a pleasant impression on us.
To drive away this painful picture, one of those present felt prompted
to hazard the comforting remark that present conjunctures guaranteed a
long peace--that the triple alliance----
On this the general conversation was luckily brought back to the domain
of politics, and Minister T’other-side took the word.
“In reality” (Lori Griesbach was hanging on his words), “it is clear
that the defensive power which we have attained is something tremendous,
and must deter all peace-breakers. The law of the Landsturm, which binds
all citizens fit for service from nineteen to forty-two years of age,
and those who have been officers even up to sixty years, to military
service, enables us at the first summons to put 4,800,000 soldiers in
the field at once. On the other side, it is not to be denied that the
increased demands which are contemplated by the war-ministry press
heavily on the people, and that the measures necessitated by these
demands, to secure the necessary readiness of the country for war, act
in the opposite way on the regulation of the finances; but, on the other
side, it is exhilarating to see with what joyful, self-sacrificing
patriotism the representatives of the people always and in all places
vote the increased burdens which the ministry of war demands. They
recognise the necessity admitted by all enlightened politicians, and
conditioned by the increase in the defensive forces of the neighbouring
states, and by the political situation, for subordinating all other
considerations to the iron compulsion of military development.”
“A live leading article,” said some one half aloud.
“T’other-side,” however, went on:--
“And all the more, because it is in this way that a security will
undoubtedly be taken for the maintenance of peace. For while we, in
obedience to traditional patriotism, emulate the steady increase of the
defensive power of our neighbours, in order to secure our own borders,
we are fulfilling an exalted duty, and are in hopes to banish also far
away all the dangers which may threaten us from any side; and therefore
I raise my glass in honour of that principle which, as I know, is so
dear to the heart of our friend, the Baroness Martha--a principle which
the signatories of the League of Peace of Central Europe also prize
highly--and I ask you to join with me in drinking: ‘Long live peace! and
may its blessings be right long preserved to us!’”
“I will not drink to that,” I said. “An armed peace is _no_ benefit; and
war ought to be avoided, not for a long time, but for _ever_. If one
were making a sea voyage, the assurance would not suffice that it would
be ‘right long’ before the ship struck on a rock. The honourable captain
should aim at _this_--that the _whole_ voyage shall be got over
prosperously.”
Dr. Bresser, who was still our best home friend, came to my aid.
“In reality, your excellence, can you trust to the honest and sincere
desire for peace of men who are soldiers from passionate enthusiasm? who
will not hear of anything which endangers war--_viz._, disarmaments,
leagues of states, arbitration courts? And could the delight in arsenals
and fortresses and manœuvres and so forth persist, if these things
were looked on merely as what they are held out as being--mere
scarecrows? So that the whole money expended on their erection is spent
only in order that they may never be used? The peoples are to be obliged
to give up all their money to make fortifications on their frontiers
with a view of kissing hands to each other across those frontiers? The
army is thus to be brought down to the level of a mere _gendarmerie_ for
the maintenance of peace, and ‘the most exalted War-lord’ is to preside
merely over a crowd of perpetual shunners of war? No; behind this mask,
the _si vis pacem_ mask, glances of understanding wink at each other,
and the deputies who vote every war-budget wink at the same time.”
“The representatives of the people?” broke in the Minister. “Surely the
spirit of sacrifice is worthy of nothing but praise, which in
threatening seasons they never fail to show, and which finds cheering
expression in the unanimous acceptance of the appropriate laws.”
“Forgive me, your excellence. I should like to call out to those
unanimous voters, one ofter the other, ‘Your “Yes” will rob that mother
of her only child. Yours will put that poor fellow’s eyes out. Yours
will set fire to a collection of books which cannot be replaced. Yours
will dash out the brains of a poet who would have been the glory of your
country. But you have all voted “yes” to this, just in order not to
appear cowards, as if the only thing one had to fear in giving assent
was what regards _oneself_. Is then human egotism so great that this is
the only motive which can be suggested for opposing war? Well, I grant
you egotism is great: for each one of you prefers to hound on a hundred
thousand men to destruction rather than that you should expose your dear
self even to the suspicion of having ever experienced one single
paroxysm of fear.’”
“I hope, my good doctor,” said the colonel dryly, “that you may never
become a deputy; the whole house would hiss you down.”
“Well, to expose myself to the risk of that would suffice for a proof
that I am not a coward. It is swimming _against_ the stream which
requires the strength of steel.”
“But suppose the moment of danger should come, and we should be found
unprepared?”
“Let such a condition of justice be instituted as would make the
occurrence of ‘the moment of danger’ an impossibility. For what such a
moment might be, colonel, no one can at present form any clear
conception. With the dreadfulness of the science of warlike implements
which we have already attained, and which is constantly advancing, with
the enormous proportions of the powers engaged in the contest, the next
war will in reality be no mere ‘moment of danger’. But there is really
no word for it. A time of gigantic misery--aid and nursing out of the
question--sanitary reforms and the arrangements for provisioning will
appear as mere irony in face of the demands upon them. The next war,
about which people talk so glibly and so indifferently, will not be a
gain for one side and loss for the other, but _ruin_ for _all_. Who
amongst us here votes for this ‘moment of danger’?”
“Not I, to be sure,” said the Minister, “and not you either, dear
doctor; but men in general, and not our Government--I will be surety for
them--but the other states.”
“What right have you to think other men worse and more unreasonable than
you or I? Now I will tell you a little story:--
“Before the closed gate of a beautiful garden stood a crowd of men, one
thousand and one in number, looking in very longingly. The gatekeeper
had orders to let the people in, in case the majority among them wished
for admission. He called one of them to him, ‘Tell me--only speak
honestly--do you wish to come in?’ ‘Oh yes, to be sure I do; but the
other thousand, I am certain, do not.’ The careful gatekeeper wrote this
answer in his notebook. Then he called up a second. He said the same.
Again the other entered in the ‘Yes’ column the number 1, and in the
‘No’ column the number 1000. And so it went on up to the last man. Then
he added up the figures. The result was--one thousand and one ‘Yes’;
over a million ‘No’. So the gate remained shut, for the ‘Noes’ had a
crushing majority; and that proceeded from the fact that every one
considered himself obliged to answer for the others too, instead of for
himself only.”
“To be sure,” began the Minister thoughtfully; and again Lori Griesbach
turned her eyes on him with admiration. “To be sure, it would be a fine
thing if a unanimous vote in favour of laying down one’s arms could be
brought about; but, on the other side, what Government would dare to
make the beginning? To be sure, there is nothing so desirable as
concord; but, on the other side, how can lasting concord be thought
possible so long as human passions, separate interests, and so forth,
still continue?”
“I beg your pardon,” said my son Rudolf, now taking the word. “Forty
millions of inhabitants in a state form one whole. Then why not several
hundred millions? Can this be susceptible of logical and mathematical
proof, that so long as human passions, separate interests, and so forth,
still continue, it is indeed possible for forty millions of people to
renounce the right to go to war with each other about them; nay, three
states, like the present triple alliance, may ally themselves together,
and form a ‘League of Peace’; but five states cannot do it, and must not
do it. Truly, truly, our world of to-day gives itself out as wondrous
wise, and laughs at the savages; and yet in many things we also cannot
count up to five.”
Some voices made themselves heard: “What?” “Savages?” “That about us,
with our over-refined culture?” “At the end of the nineteenth century?”
Rudolf stood up.
“Yes; savages. I will not recall the word. And so long as we cling to
the past we shall remain savages. But we are already standing at the
gate of a new period. Glances are directed forwards. All are pressing on
strongly towards another, a higher form. Savagery, with its idols and
its weapons--there are many who are already edging away gradually from
it. If even we may be nearer to barbarism than most people believe, we
are also perhaps nearer to our ennoblement than most people hope. _The
prince or statesman is perhaps already alive_ who is to bring to
perfection the exploit which will live in all future history as the most
glorious and most enlightened of all exploits--that which will carry
universal disarmament. We have placed our feet already on the threshold
of an age in which manhood is to raise itself into humanity--to the
nobility of humanity, as Frederick Tilling used to say. Mother, I drink
this glass now to the memory of your unforgotten, loved, and trusted
one, to whom I too owe everything, all I think and all I am; and from
that glass (and he threw it against the wall, where it shattered to
pieces) shall no other drop ever be drunk again; and to-day, at my
new-born child’s christening, shall no other toast be proposed than
_this_--‘Hail to the future!’ To fulfil its tasks shall we clothe
ourselves in steel? No. Shall we endeavour to show ourselves worthy of
our fathers’ fathers, as the old phrase goes? No. But of our grandsons’
grandsons. Mother,” said he, breaking off, “you are weeping. What is the
matter with you? What do you see there?”
My gaze had been directed to the open glass door. The rays of the
setting sun had thrown a halo of tremulous gold round a rose-bush, and
from this, rising up in life-like clearness, was my dream-picture. I saw
the garden-shears glitter, the white hair shine. He smiled at me as he
said, “Are we not a happy old couple?”
Ah, woe is me!
FINIS
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] About the “Damenwahl” Bishop Ch. Wordsworth in his _Annals of my
Early Life_, p. 141, thus speaks, describing a ball at Greifswald: “As
I was standing among others looking on at a party of dancers, a fair
Greifswaldese, who had been one of them, came up to me and offered
me her hand. Not knowing who she was or what she said (for she spoke
in German), I could only make to her a low bow and look abashed.
It was explained to me afterwards that the cotillon, which was the
dance going on, allows any lady to offer herself as a partner to any
gentleman whom she chooses, and that I had declined a very pretty
compliment.”
[2] “Gefreite”--a soldier exempted from sentinel duty.
[3] This an Austrian fashion, and does not imply any extraordinary
attachment or freedom.
[4] One of the chief streets of Vienna.
[5] The German words for “woo and win”.
[6] _Sie_, “you,” is used in German to strangers; _Du_, “thou,”
to intimates. But as no such habit prevails in England, _Du_ is
translated into the ordinary “you” throughout the book.
[7] Schleswig-Holstein, brother-land, kick the Prussians out of the
country.
[8] _Braut_, an engaged girl.
[9] These transactions were described eighteen years later as follows:
General Boulanger writes in his work on the campaign of 1870: “After
having obtained a legitimate satisfaction we wanted to impose a
humiliation on the King of Prussia; and in doing so we went on to take
a diplomatic attitude which was aggressive, nay, almost inconsistent.
The formal renunciation of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern had been
gained by us, and we had, besides, the assent of the King of Prussia
to this renunciation. The reparation was sufficient, for it covered
the respective domains of the interests of France, the rights of
France, and the obligations of the chief of the house of Hohenzollern.
We ought to have stopped there. Our Government pushed on farther. It
wanted a categorical engagement from King William for the future. By
carrying our claims so high it changed the object and ground of the
strife. It converted it into a direct challenge to the sovereign of
Prussia.”
[10] Briefe hervorragender Männer an Alexander Weill--Zürich.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
I presented my Freid. v. Tilling=> I presented my Fried. v. Tilling {pg
113}
negotiations after Duppel=> negotiations after Düppel {pg 175}
resounded from the next reom=> resounded from the next room {pg 285}
arriére-pensée=> arrière-pensée {pg 386}
End of Project Gutenberg's Lay Down Your Arms, by Bertha von Suttner