convinced of this truth, I should not communicate my resolution to you; but my family is one that has a really German heart, and that would consider me as a coward and an unworthy son if I did not follow this impulse.  I certainly feel the greatness of the sacrifice; it costs me something, believe me, to leave my beautiful studies and go to put myself under the orders of vulgar, uneducated people, but this only increases my courage in going to secure the liberty of my brothers; moreover, when once that liberty is secured, if God deigns to allow, I will return to carry them His word.

“I take leave, therefore, for a time of you, my most worthy parents, of my brothers, my sisters, and all who are dear to me.  As, after mature deliberation, it seems the most suitable thing for me to serve with the Bavarians.  I shall get myself enrolled, for as long as the war may last, with a company of that nation.  Farewell, then; live happily; far away from you as I shall be, I shall follow your pious exhortations.  In this new track I shall still I hope, remain pure before God, and I shall always try to walk in the path that rises above the things of earth and leads to those of heaven, and perhaps in this career the bliss of saving some souls from their fall may be reserved for me.

“Your dear image will always be about me; I will always have the Lord before my eyes and in my heart, so that I may endure joyfully the pains and fatigues of this holy war.  Include me in your Prayers; God will send you the hope of better times to help you in bearing the unhappy time in which we now are.  We cannot see one another again soon, unless we conquer; and if we should be conquered (which God forbid!), then my last wish, which I pray you, I conjure you, to fulfil, my last and supreme wish would be that you, my dear and deserving German relatives, should leave an enslaved country for some other not yet under the yoke.

“But why should we thus sadden one another’s hearts?  Is not our cause just and holy, and is not God just and holy?  How then should we not be victors?  You see that sometimes I doubt, so, in your letters, which I am impatiently expecting, have pity on me and do not alarm my soul, far in any case we shall meet again in another country, and that one will always be free and happy.

“I am, until death, your dutiful and grateful son, “Karl sand.”

These two lines of Korner’s were written as a postscript:—­

    “Perchance above our foeman lying dead
     We may behold the star of liberty.”

With this farewell to his parents, and with Korner’s poems on his lips, Sand gave up his books, and on the 10th of May we find him in arms among the volunteer chasseurs enrolled under the command of Major Falkenhausen, who was at that time at Mannheim; here he found his second brother, who had preceded him, and they underwent all their drill together.