That was on July 15, 1870, on a Friday.  Late in the afternoon the dismal news was spread in Berlin that the French ambassador at Ems had insulted the king, who had retired to the capital, and that a combat with the arrogant neighbors on the Rhine was inevitable.  Before night the street Unter den Linden, from the Brandenburger Thor to the Schlossbrucke, was packed with men overflowing with intense excitement.  Without any preconceived arrangement, all the inhabitants decorated their windows with banners and lights, and the streets assumed the festal appearance of rejoicings over a victory.  The crowd looked upon this spectacle not as an undecided beginning, but a glorious conclusion.  There was no fear in any face, no question as to the future in any eye, but the certainty of triumph in all; as if they had seen the last page turned in the book of fate, with victory and its glorious results written thereon.

Toward nine o’clock a thunderbolt broke over the Brandenburger Thor, and rolled like the breaking of a wave to the other end of the street.  The king had left the Potsdam railway station a quarter of an hour ago, and the crowd greeted him with a tremendous shout as his carriage appeared.  The people wished by this acclamation, springing from the depths of their hearts, to show their ruler that they were prepared to follow him even to death.  But the king was so much absorbed in thought that he scarcely seemed to hear or notice the enthusiasm of the crowd.  He saluted and bowed to right and left as a prince is accustomed to do from his childhood, but it was a mechanical action of the body, and his mind had little part in it.  His eyes were not looking at the sea of uncovered heads, but seemed fixed, under knitted brows, on the distance, as if they endeavored to decipher there some indistinct, shadowy form.  Did the king perceive in this moment the responsibility of one human being to carry such a load?  Did he wish in his innermost heart that he might share the weight of the decision with others—­the representatives of the people—­and not alone be forced to throw the dice deciding the life or death of hundreds and thousands?  Who can say?  At all events the powerful features of the king’s face betrayed no such uneasy doubt—­only a deep earnestness and an immovable steadiness of expression.  Belief in the divine right of his kingship gave him power over the minds of men, and he took his duties on him in this hour without weakness or failing, grasping with his human hand the obscure spiritual web of man’s destiny, and with his limited intelligence trying to unravel the dark threads here and there, on which hung the healing and destruction of millions.  In such moments a whole people will become united into one being, swayed by the mastery of a single mind, and await the commands of a single will.  It comes, no one knows from whom—­all blindly follow.  In spite of the superficial differences which men find in one another under similar conditions, the powerful effect of unconscious imitation is surprisingly apparent, and under its operation personal peculiarities disappear.