THIS was the second time in my life that my beloved husband had been restored to me from the dangers of war.

Oh! the blessedness of having him once more with me. How was it that I, just I, had succeeded in emerging out of the flood of woe in which so many had sunk, on to a safe and happy shore? Happy for those who in such circumstances can raise their eyes with joy to heaven and send up warm thanks to their Guide above. By this thanksgiving, which, because it is spoken in humility, they take to be humble, and of which they have no conception how arrogant and self-important it is in reality, they feel themselves relieved, inasmuch as they have, according to their own opinion, given a sufficient discharge for the benefit which has accrued to them, and which they call grace and favour. I could not put myself in that position. When I thought of the wretches whom I had seen in those abodes of misery, and when I thought of the lamentable mothers and wives whose dear ones had been hurried into torture and death by the same destiny as had so favoured me—when I thought of this I found it impossible to be so immodest as to take this favour as having been sent by God, and one for which I was entitled to give thanks. It appeared to me that just as, a little while before, Frau Walter, our housekeeper, had swept her broom over a cupboard on which a swarm of ants who scented sugar were collected, so fate had swept over the Bohemian battlefields. The poor busy black things were mostly crushed, killed, scattered; but a few remained uninjured. Now, would it have been reasonable and proper in them if they had sent up their heartfelt thanks for this to Frau Walter? No. I could not entirely banish the woe out of my heart by means of the joy of meeting again, however great that were. I neither could nor did I wish to do so. I was not able to help—to dress wounds, nurse, wait on the sick—like those sisters of mercy and the courageous Frau Simon had done; my strength was not sufficient for that. But the mercy which consists in compassion, that I had offered up to my poor brother-men, and that I could not withdraw from them again in my selfish contentment. I could not forget.

But if I might not triumph and give thanks yet I well might love—might clasp the beloved one to my heart with a hundredfold the former tenderness. “Oh Frederick, Frederick!” I repeated amidst our tears and caresses, “have I got you again?”

“And you wanted to seek me out and nurse me? How heroic and how foolish, Martha!”

“Foolish! Yes, there I agree with you. The appealing voice which drew me on was imagination—superstition—for you were not calling for me. But heroic? No. If you knew how cowardly I showed myself when face to face with misery! It was only you, if you had been lying there, that I could have nursed. I have seen horrors, Frederick, that I can never forget. Oh! this beautiful world of ours, how can people so spoil it, Frederick? A world in which two beings can so love each other as you and I do, in which there can glow such a fire of bliss as is our union, how can it be so foolish as to rake up the flames of hate which brings death and woe in its train?”

“I also have seen something horrible, Martha—something that I can never forget. Just think of Godfrey v. Tessow rushing wildly upon me with uplifted sword—it was in the cavalry action at Sadowa.”

“Aunt Rosalie’s son?”

“The same; he recognised me in time, and let the blade sink which he had already raised.”

“He acted in that directly contrary to his duty. How? To spare an enemy of his king and country, under the worthless pretext that he was his own dear friend and cousin.”

“Poor fellow! He had scarcely let his arm fall when a sabre whistled over his head. It was my next man, a young officer, who wanted to defend his lieutenant-colonel, and——”

Frederick stopped and covered his face with both hands.

“Killed?” I asked shuddering. He nodded.

“Mamma, mamma,” resounded from the next room, and the door was burst open. It was my sister Lilly, leading little Rudolf by the hand.

“Forgive me if I interrupt your tÊte-À-tÊte on meeting again, but this boy was too ardently eager to see his mamma to be denied.”

I hastened to the child and pressed him passionately to my heart. Ah! poor, poor Aunt Rosalie!

On the very same day the surgeon who had been summoned by telegraph from Vienna arrived at the chÂteau and undertook the treatment of Frederick’s wound. Six weeks of the most perfect rest, and his cure would be complete.

That my husband should quit the service was a point perfectly settled between us two. Of course, this could not be carried out till the war was at an end. The war might, however, be practically looked on as over. After the renunciation of Venice the conflict with Italy was ended, Napoleon’s friendship secured, and we should be in a position to conclude peace on moderate terms with the northern conqueror. Our emperor himself was most ardently desirous to put an end to the unlucky campaign, and would not expose his capital to a siege also. The Prussian victories in the rest of Germany, joined to the entry of the Prussians into Frankfort-on-the-Main which took place on July 16, invested our adversaries with a halo, which, like all success, extorted admiration even from our countrymen, and awoke a sort of belief that it was an historical mission which was thus being carried out by Prussia through the battles she had won. The words “suspension of hostilities,” “peace,” having been once let drop, one could count on their taking effect as certainly as in the times when a threatening of war has once found vent one may reckon on its breaking out sooner or later. Even my father himself admitted that under the stress of circumstances a suspension of hostilities was desirable; the army was debilitated, the superiority of the needle-gun must be recognised, and an advance of the enemy’s troops on the capital, the blockade of Vienna, and along with that the destruction of Grumitz, these were possibilities which were not particularly alluring to even my warlike papa. His trust in the invincibility of the Austrian troops had then received a severe shock by present facts, and it is, speaking generally, a predisposition of the human mind to infer from the events passing before us that they will recur in a series, that on one success another success will follow, on one misfortune a fresh misfortune. So it is better to stop in the run of bad luck—the time of satisfaction and of vengeance will come one day.

Vengeance! and always repeated vengeance! Every war must leave one side defeated, and if this side can only find satisfaction in the next war, a war which must naturally produce another defeated side craving satisfaction, when is it to stop? How can justice be attained, when can old injustice be atoned, if fresh injustice is always to be employed as the means of atonement? It would never suggest itself to any reasonable man to wash out ink spots with ink and oil stains with oil, it is only blood which has always to be washed out with new blood! The frame of mind prevailing at Grumitz was on the whole a gloomy one. In the village panic reigned. “The Prussians are coming. The Prussians are coming” was always the cry of terror which they kept uttering still, in spite of the hopes of peace which were cherished in many quarters; and people were packing up their treasures at home or burying them out of sight. Even in the chÂteau Aunt Mary and Frau Walter had taken care that the family plate had been put in a secret place of concealment. Lilly was in constant anxiety about Conrad, of whom there had been no news for several days; my father found himself wounded in his patriotic honour, and we two, Frederick and I, in spite of the bliss which lay deep in our hearts on account of our re-union, had been most painfully shaken by the miseries of the time which we had experienced, and with which we so warmly sympathised. And from all sides flowed in constantly fresh food for this pain. In all the correspondence in the papers, in all our letters from relatives and acquaintance, there was nothing but complaints and lamentations. First there was a letter from Aunt Rosalie, who had not yet learned her unhappiness, but who spoke in such moving terms of the fear in which she was of having to lose her only child—a letter over which we two shed bitter tears. And in the evening, when we sat all together, there was no more of cheerful chatter, seasoned with jokes, music, card-playing and interesting reading, but always, whether spoken or read, only histories of woe and death. We read nothing but newspapers, and these were filled with “war,” and nothing but “war,” and our talk related chiefly to the experiences which Frederick and I had brought back from the Bohemian battlefields. My departure thither had been, it is true, taken very ill by them all, but for all that they listened eagerly as I related the events there, partly from my own observation, partly from what I had been told. Rosa was an enthusiast for Frau Simon, and swore that, if the war was going to continue, she would join the Saxon Samaritans. Papa, of course, protested against this.

“With the exception of the sisters of charity and the sutlers no woman has any business in a war. You must surely see how useless our Martha showed herself to be. That was an unpardonable prank of yours, you silly child. Your husband ought to chastise you properly for it.”

Frederick stroked my hand.

“Yes, it was a folly, but a noble one.”

If I spoke of the horrors which I had seen with my own eyes, or which my travelling companions had related to me, in quite naked terms, I was often interrupted reproachfully by my father or Aunt Mary, with: “How can people repeat such dreadful things?” or, “Are you not ashamed, as a woman, as a gently bred lady, to take such ugly words into your mouth?” This exhausted my patience.

“Oh, away with your prudery! away with your affected decorum! Any cruelties may be committed, but it is not permitted to name them. Gently bred ladies are not to know anything about blood and filth, but they may embroider the flags which are to wave over this bath of blood; maidens may not know anything of the cause which is to render their lovers incapable of reaping the reward of their love, but they are allowed to promise them that reward, in order to inspire their martial ardour. Death and killing do not offer anything improper for you—well-bred ladies as you are—but at the bare mention of the things which are the sources of the implanted life, you must blush and look aside. That is cruel ethics I would have you know—cruel and cowardly. This looking aside—with the bodily and the spiritual eye—it is to this that is due the persistence of so much misery and injustice. If one had but the courage to look steadily whenever one’s fellow-creatures are pining in pain and misery, and the courage to reflect on what one saw——”

“Don’t get excited,” interrupted Aunt Mary; “however much we might look, and however much we might reflect, we should never be able to chase evil from the earth. It is now, once for all, a vale of misery, and will ever remain so.”

“It will not,” I replied; and so at least I had the last word.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“The danger that peace will be concluded is coming steadily nearer,” said my brother Otto complainingly one day.

We were sitting at the time at the family table again, Frederick on the sofa near us, and some one had just read out of the newspapers the tidings that Benedetti had arrived in Bohemia, obviously entrusted with the mission of suggesting proposals for peace.

My little brother—he was indeed big enough by this time, but I had got into the habit of calling him so—my little brother was in fear of nothing so much as that the war would come to a speedy end, and it would not be his lot to chase the enemy out of the country. For the news had just come from the Neustadt that in case hostilities had to be resumed, then at the next period of calling out the reserves—i.e., next August 18—not only the recruits of the last year, but also a large proportion of the last but one would have to go at once into active service. This prospect delighted the young hero. Straight from the academy into the field! What rapture! Just so a school-girl looks out into the world—to her first ball. She has learned to dance; the Neustadt scholar has learned to shoot and fence. She longs to display her powers under a blazing chandelier in evening dress, to the accompaniment of the orchestra; and he longs no less for the smart uniform and the great artillery dance.

My father was of course pleased in the highest degree at his darling’s martial ardour.

“By easy, my brave boy,” he said in reply to Otto’s sigh over the threat of peace, patting him the while on the shoulder. “You have a long life before you. Even if the campaign were to come to an end now, it must break out again in a year or two.”

I said nothing. Since my outbreak against Aunt Mary I had, on Frederick’s advice, formed and carried out the resolution to avoid these painful disputes on the subject of war as far as possible. It would lead to nothing but bitter feelings; and after having seen the traces of the grim scourge with my own eyes I had so increased my hatred and my contempt for war that all defence of it cut into my soul like a personal insult. About Frederick we were indeed at one—he was to quit the service; and I was also clear on this point, that my son Rudolf should not be put into any military institution where the whole of the education is directed—and must, to be consistent, be directed—to awaken in the young a longing for deeds of war. I once asked my brother what might be the views which were put before the students on the subject of war. His replies came to something like what follows: War was represented as a necessary evil (thus, at any rate, evil—a concession to the spirit of the age) but at the same time as the chief excitant of the noblest of human virtues—such as courage, the power of self-renunciation and the spirit of sacrifice, as the bestower of the greatest glory, and lastly, as the mightiest factor in the development of civilisation. The mighty conquerors and founders of the so-called universal empires—Alexander, CÆsar, Napoleon—were quoted as the most exalted specimens of human greatness, and recommended for admiration. The successes and advantages of war were set forth in the liveliest colours, while they passed over in complete silence the drawbacks which inevitably come in its train, its barbarising influence, its ruinous effects, the moral and physical degeneration it causes. Yes, assuredly, for the same system was pursued in my case—in the education of girls—and it was thus that was kindled in my childish spirit the admiration of warlike laurels which at first inspired me. If I had even myself been full of regret that the possibility of plucking these laurels did not beckon me on, as it did the boys, could I now take it ill in a boy if such a possibility filled him with joy and with impatience?

And so I answered nothing to Otto’s complaint, but quietly went on with my reading. I was, as usual, reading a newspaper, and that was filled, as usual, with news from the theatre of war.

“Here is an interesting correspondence of a physician who accompanied the retreat of our troops. Shall I read it aloud?” I asked.

“The retreat?” cried Otto. “I had rather not hear about that. Now, if it were the history of the retreat of the foe, hotly pursued——”

“As a general principle it surprises me,” remarked Frederick, “that any one should tell the tale of a flight which he has accompanied. That is an episode of war which the people concerned in it generally pass over in silence.”

“An orderly retreat is however not a flight,” interposed my father. “We had one in ’49. It was under Radetzky——”

I knew the story and prevented its continuation by interposing.

“This account was sent to a medical weekly paper, and, therefore, was not intended for military circles. Listen.”

And without further request for permission I read out the passage.

“It was about four o’clock when our troops began the retreat. We doctors were fully occupied dressing the wounded—to the number of some hundreds—who could bear removal. Suddenly cavalry broke in on us, and spread themselves beside and behind us, over hills and fields, accompanied by artillery and baggage-waggons, towards KÖniggrÄtz. Many riders fell and were stamped to pieces by the horses that came behind. Waggons overturned and crushed the foot-men, who were pressed in among them. We were scattered away from the dressing station, which disappeared all at once. They shouted to us: “Save yourselves!” While this cry went on we heard the thunder of the cannon, and splinters of shell began to fall amongst our crowd. And so we were carried forward by the press without knowing whither. I despaired of my life. My poor old mother, my dear espoused bride, farewell! On a sudden we had water before us, on the right a railway embankment, on the left a hollow way stopped up with clumsy baggage-and sick-waggons, and behind us an innumerable crowd of horsemen. We began to wade through the water. Now came the order to cut the traces of the horses, to save the horses, and leave the waggons behind. The waggons of the wounded also? Yes, those too. We on foot were almost in despair: we were wading again over our knees in water, every moment in fear of being shot down or drowned. At last we got into a railway station, which again was closely barred. Many broke through the barrier, the rest leaped over it. I with thousands of the infantry soldiers ran on. Now we came to a river, waded through it, then clambered over some palisades, passed again through a second river up to our necks, clambered up some rising ground, leaped over fallen trees, and arrived about one A.M. at a little wood, where we sank down from exhaustion and fever. About three o’clock we marched—that is, some of us, another part had to remain and die there—we marched on still dripping with wet and shuddering with cold. The villages were all empty—no men, no provisions, not even a drop of drinking water; the air was poisoned, corpses covering the corn-fields; bodies black as coal, with the eyes fallen from their sockets——”

“Enough! enough!” cried the girls.

“The censorship should not allow the publication of things of that sort,” said my father. “It might destroy a man’s love for the profession of a soldier.”

“And especially the love for war, which would be a pity,” I murmured half aloud.

“As a general rule,” he went on, “about these episodes of flight, the people who have been present at them should observe a decorous silence, for it is surely no honour to have borne a part at a general ‘Sauve qui peut’. The fellow who, by shouting ‘Save yourselves,’ gives the signal for scampering should be shot down on the spot. One coward raises the shout, and a thousand brave men are demoralised thereby and obliged to run with him.”

“Exactly so,” replied Frederick, “just as when one brave man shouts ‘Forward’ a thousand cowards are obliged to rush on, and thus are really animated by a merely momentary courage. Men cannot in general be divided so sharply into courageous and cowards, but every one has his moments of more or less courage and those of more or less cowardice. And especially when one is dealing with masses of men each individual is dependent on the condition of his comrades. We are gregarious animals, and are under the domination of gregarious feelings. Where one sheep leaps over the others leap after him, where one man rushes on shouting ‘Hurrah’ the others shout and rush after him, and where one dashes down his musket into the corn in order to run away the others run after him. In the one case ‘our brave troops’ get praised, in the other their proceedings are passed over in silence, yet they are all the same persons. Yes, they are the very same men who, obeying in each case a common impulse, behave and feel at one time courageously, at another cowardly. Bravery and fear are to be regarded, not as fixed qualities, but rather as states of the spirits, just like joy and grief. I, during my first campaign, was once involved in the whirl of one of these panic flights. In the official account of the Etat-major, it is true, the affair was passed over in a few words as an ‘orderly retreat’; but in fact it was a thorough rout. They rushed on, madly raging in indescribable confusion; arms, knapsacks, shakos, and cloaks were cast away; no word of command could be heard; panting, shrieking, hounded on by despair, the disbanded battalion streamed on, with the enemy pursuing and firing after them. That is one of the many gruesome phases of war—the most gruesome, when the two adversaries figure no longer as warriors but as hunter and prey. Thence arises in the hunter the most cruel lust of blood; in the prey the most bitter fear of death. The pursued, hunted and spurred by fear, get into a kind of delirium, all the feelings and sentiments in which they have been educated, and which animate a man as he is rushing into battle, such as love of country, ambition, thirst for noble deeds—all these are lost to the fugitive. He is filled with one impulse only, in its greatest force, liberated from all restraint, and that the most vehement which can assume the mastery of a living being—the impulse of self-preservation: and this, as danger comes nearer, rises to the highest paroxysm of terror.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Frederick’s recovery progressed surely. The feverish outer world, too, seemed to come nearer to recovery. The word “Peace” was always being spoken more frequently and always louder. The advance of the Prussians, who found no longer any opposition on the way, and who were quietly drawing on towards Vienna, by way of BrÜnn, the keys of which were delivered by the burgomaster to King William, this advance was more in the nature of a military promenade than an operation of war, and on July 26 a regular suspension of arms at Nikolsburg was ended by the preliminaries of peace.

My father had a great delight in the reception of the news of Admiral Tegethoff’s victory at Lyssa. Italian ships blown into the air, the Affundatore destroyed, what a satisfaction! I could not with perfect honesty take my share in his joy. Speaking generally, I could not understand why, since Venice had already been surrendered, these naval actions should be fought at all. So much, however, is certain, that there broke out over this event the most lively shout of joy, not from my father only, but from all the Viennese papers. The fame of a victory in war is a thing which has been swollen up to such a size through the traditions of a thousand years, that even from the mere news of one some share of pride is spread over the whole population. If anywhere a general of your country has beaten a general of a foreign country, every single subject of the state in question is congratulated, and since each man hears that all the rest are rejoicing, a thing which in itself is exhilarating, why, each man ends by rejoicing, in fact. This is what Frederick called “feeling in droves”.

Another political event of those days was that Austria at length joined the Geneva convention.

“Well, are you contented now?” asked my father as he read the news. “Do you agree that war, which you are always calling a barbarity, is always becoming more humane as civilisation progresses? I too am indeed in favour of carrying on war humanely: the wounded should have the most careful nursing and all possible relief.... Even on strategic principles, which in the long ran are surely the most important in warlike matters, by a proper treatment of the sick very many may become fit for service again, and be replaced in the ranks in a shorter space of time.”

“You are right, papa. Material to be used again, that is the chief thing. But after the things which I have seen, no Red Cross will be enough, even if they had ten times as much of men and means, to conjure away the misery which one battle brings with it——”

“No, indeed, not to conjure it away, but to mitigate it. What cannot be prevented, one must always seek to mitigate.”

“Experience teaches that no sufficient mitigation is possible. I should therefore wish the maxim to be inverted, ‘What cannot be mitigated ought to be prevented’.”

It began to be a fixed idea with me, that war must cease. And every individual must contribute, all that he is able, to bring mankind nearer to this end, were it but by the thousandth part of a line. I could not get away from the scenes which I had witnessed in Bohemia. Especially at night, when I woke out of a sound sleep, I would feel that sore pain at my heart, and felt at the same time in my conscience the admonition, just as if some one was giving me the command, “Stop it, prevent it, do not suffer it”. It was not till I was wide awake and thought on what I was that the perception of my impotence came over me. What then was I to stop or to prevent? A man might as well order me, in face of the sea swelling with winds and waves, “Not to suffer it, dry it up”. And my next thought was, especially as I listened to his breathing, one of deep happiness, “I have Frederick again,” and I would plunge into this idea as vividly as I could, and then I would put my arm round him as he lay beside me, even at the risk of wakening him, and kiss his lips.

My son Rudolf had really reason to be jealous of his stepfather, and this feeling was actually aroused in the boy’s heart, especially since recent days. That I had gone away from Grumitz without bidding him good-bye, that after my return my first wish was not to embrace him, that as a general rule I did not move from my husband’s side for almost the whole day—all this put together caused the poor little fellow one fine morning to throw himself weeping on my neck, and sob out: “Mamma, mamma, you do not love me a bit”.

“What nonsense are you talking, child?”

“Yes—only—only papa. I—I will not grow up at all—if you no longer like me.”

“No longer like you—you my treasure!” I kissed and caressed the weeping child. “You, my only son, my pride, the joy of my future. I love you so—so above—no, not above everything—but infinitely.”

After this little scene, my love for my boy came more vividly into my feelings. In the days just past, I had in fact been so much engrossed by my fears for Frederick, that poor Rudolf had got thrust a little into the background.

The plans which Frederick and I had made up between ourselves for the future were as follows: After the war was over, to quit the military service, and retire to some small, cheap place, where Frederick’s pension as colonel, and what I could contribute, would suffice to keep up our little household. We rejoiced over this solitary independent life together, as if we had been a pair of young lovers. By means of the events of our recent experience, we had been taught thoroughly that we each formed the whole world to the other. Little Rudolf, moreover, was not excluded from this fellowship. His education was a main business in filling up the existence we were planning. We were not to pass our days therein in idleness and without any aim; amongst other things we had marked out a whole list of studies, which we were to pursue in common. In especial, there was among the sciences a branch of the science of law, international, to which Frederick intended to devote himself particularly. His aim was, quite apart from all Utopian and sentimental theory, to investigate the practical side of national peace. By means of the perusal of Buckle—to which I had given him the impulse—by means of an acquaintance with the newest acquisitions in natural philosophy, which had been revealed to him in the works of Darwin, BÜchner, and others, the conviction had come before him that the world was arriving at a new phase of knowledge, and to make this knowledge his own, as far as possible, appeared to him sufficient to fill up life, along with domestic pleasures.

My father, who meanwhile knew nothing of our views, was making quite other plans for the future on our behalf. “You will now, Tilling, be colonel at an early age, and in ten years you will certainly be general. A fresh war will no doubt break out again about that time, and you may get the command of an entire corps d’armÉe, or who knows but that you may reach the rank of commander-in-chief, and perhaps the great happiness may come to you of restoring the arms of Austria to their full glory, which is now for the moment obscured. When we have once adopted the needle-gun, or perhaps some still more effectual system, we shall soon have the best in a war with these gentlemen of Prussia.”

“Who knows,” I suggested, “perhaps our enmity with Prussia will cease. Perhaps we shall some day conclude an alliance with them.”

My father shrugged his shoulders. “If women would only abstain from talking politics!” he said disdainfully. “After what has taken place, we have to chastise these insolent fellows, we have to get the annexed (as they call them—I call them ‘plundered’) states back to their severed allegiance; that is what our honour demands, and the interest of our position amongst the Powers of Europe. Friendship—alliance with these transgressors? Never! unless they came and begged humbly for it.”

“In that case,” remarked Frederick, “we should perhaps set our feet on their necks. Alliances are sought and concluded only with those whom one respects, or who can offer one protection against a common foe. In state-craft the ruling principle is egotism.”

“Oh yes,” my father replied, “if the ego means one’s country, everything else is certainly to be subordinated to it, and everything is certainly allowable and commanded which seems serviceable to its interests.”

“It is, however, to be wished,” answered Frederick, “that in the behaviour of communities the same elevated civilisation should be reached, as has banished from the behaviour of individuals the rough self-worship, resting on fist-law, and that the view should prevail more and more that one’s own interests are really most effectually furthered by avoiding damage to those of foreigners, or rather in union with the latter.”

“Eh?” asked my father, with his hand to his ear.

But Frederick could not, of course, repeat this long sentence and illustrate it, and so the discussion ended.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“I shall be at Grumitz to-morrow at one o’clock.—Conrad.”

Everybody can imagine the delight which this telegram caused Lilly. No other arrival is hailed with such joy and rapture as that of one returning from the wars. It is true that in this case there was not also what is the favourite subject of the common ballads and engravings, viz., “The conqueror’s return”; but the human feelings of the loving sweetheart would not be interfered with by patriotic considerations, and if Conrad had “taken” the city of Berlin, I believe this would not have availed to heighten the warmth of Lilly’s reception of him.

To him, of course, it would have been better if he had come home along with troops who had been victorious, if he had contributed to conquer the province of Silesia for his emperor. Meantime, the very fact of having fought is in itself an honour for a soldier, even if he is one of the beaten, nay, one of the fallen: the latter is even more especially glorious. Thus Otto told us that in the academy at Wiener-Neustadt the names of all the students were inscribed on a table of honour, to whom the advantage had befallen of having been left dead on the battlefield, TuÉ À l’ennemi, they say in France; and in that country, as everywhere else, it is a much-prized ancestral distinction. The more progenitors one can point out in one’s family who have lost their lives in battles, whether won or lost, the prouder is the descendant of it, the more value may he set on his name, the less value on his life. In order to show oneself worthy of one’s slain ancestors, one must have a lively joy of one’s own in slaying, active and passive. Well, so much the better is it, that, as long as war exists, there should also be found people who see therein elevation and inspiration, nay, even pleasure. The number, however, of these people is daily becoming less, while the number of the soldiers becomes daily greater. Whither must this finally lead? To its becoming intolerable. And whither will this lead?

Conrad did not think so deeply. His way of looking at it was excellently expressed by the well-known song of the lieutenant in the “Dame Blanche”: “Oh, what delight is a soldier’s life, what delight!” To hear him speak, one might have actually envied him the expedition of which he had just formed part. My brother Otto was really filled with this envy. This warrior returned from his baptism of blood and fire, who even before looked so knightly in his hussar uniform, and who was now also adorned with an honourable scar over his chin, received in the shower of bullets, who had perhaps given their quietus to so many of the foe, he seemed to him now surrounded by a nimbus of glory.

“It was not a successful campaign, that I must admit,” said Conrad, “but I have brought back from it one or two grand reminiscences.”

“Tell us, tell us,” Lilly and Otto besought him.

“Well, I cannot give you many details; the whole thing lies behind me like a dream, the powder gets into one’s head in such a strange way. The intoxication, in fact, or the fever, the martial fire, in a word, begins from the moment of marching. The parting from one’s love indeed comes hard on one; it was the one hour in which my breast was full of tender pain, but when one is once off with one’s comrades; when the thought is, now I am going on the highest duty which life can lay on a man, viz., to defend my beloved country; when, then, the musicians struck up Radetzky’s March, and the silken folds of the flags rustled in the wind, I must confess, Lilly, that at that moment I would not have turned back—no, not into the arms of my love. Then I felt that I should never be worthy of that love except by doing my duty out there by the side of my brethren. That we were marching to victory we did not doubt. What did we know about the horrible needle bullets? It was they alone that were the cause of our defeat. I tell you they fell on our ranks like hail. And we had also bad leaders. Benedek, you will see, will yet be brought before a court-martial. We should have attacked. If I should ever become a general my tactics would be to advance, always advance, play a forward game, invade the enemy’s country. That surely is only another kind, and the most weighty one too, of defence:—

as the poet says. However, that is nothing to the point; the emperor has not put me in command, and so I am not responsible for the tactical blunders: the generals must see how they are to settle with their military superiors and with their own consciences; we, officers and soldiers, did our duty—we had to fight, and fight we did. And that is a grand sensation in itself. The very expectation, the very excitement one feels when one rushes on to the foe and when the word goes round ‘Now it is afoot,’ this consciousness that in that moment a portion of the world’s history is being enacted, and then the pride, the joy in one’s own courage, Death right and left, great and mysterious, and yet one bids him a manly defiance——”

“Just like poor Godfrey Tessow,” murmured Frederick to himself. “Well, of course, it is the same school.”

Conrad went on eagerly.

“One’s heart beats higher, one’s pulse flutters, there awakes—and that is the peculiar rapture of it—there wakes the joy of battle. The rage, the hate of the foe blazes up, and at the same time the most burning love for one’s menaced country, while the onward rush, the hewing down at them becomes a delight. One feels transported into another world from that in which one grew up, a world in which all the ordinary feelings and ways of looking at things are changed into their opposites. Life is changed into plunder; killing becomes a duty. Only, however, heroism, the most magnificent self-sacrifice, are left surviving—all other conceptions have perished in the tumult. Then add the powder-smoke, the battle-cries. I tell you it is a state of things to which no parallel is to be found elsewhere. At the most, perhaps, the same fire may glow through one in the lion or tiger hunt, when one stands in the face of the maddened wild beast, and——”

“Yes,” broke in Frederick, “the fight against an enemy who threatens you with death, the longing, proud desire of conquering him fills you with peculiar enjoyment—pray forgive me the word, Aunt Mary—as indeed everything which sustains or expands life is guaranteed to us by Nature through the reward of joy. As long as man was in peril from savage assailants, on two legs or four, and could only protect his life by killing the latter, battle became one of his delights. If in the midst of a fight the same pleasure creeps through our veins still though we are civilised men, it is only a reminiscence of heredity. And at the present time, when there are in Europe no more savages or beasts of prey, in order that this delight may not vanish from us entirely, we have invented artificial assailants for ourselves. This is what goes on. Attention! You wear blue coats, and those men there red coats. As soon as we clap hands three times the red coats will be turned for you into tigers, and the blue coats will become wild beasts to them. So now—one, two, three; blow the charge, beat the attack; and now you can set off, and devour each other; and after 10,000—or always in proportion to the rise in the magnitude of armies—100,000 artificial tigers have devoured each other with mutual delight in battle at Xdorf, then you have the battle of Xdorf, which is to become historical; and then the men who clap hands assemble round a green congress table in Xstadt, rule lines for altered frontiers on the map, haggle over the proportion of contributions, sign a paper which figures in the historical annals as the Peace of Xstadt, clap their hands three times once more, and say to the redcoats and the bluecoats surviving ‘Embrace each other, men and brethren’!”

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