that unity would not come out of a war, but rather from the freewill of the German people.  It is now with us through other means, but I fear not better ones.  The aristocracy and the Church will assert themselves again, and the military system will lay its iron hand over the life of the whole nation.  People say already that it is the officer and not the schoolmaster who has made Germany great.  These changes put my thoughts in a ferment.  One has yet to see whether such a society of officers can produce a people, and if its thinkers and teachers could not lead it to a richer cultivation, and its poets to a higher ideal of duty.  I am afraid, my friend, that the higher souls in our new empire will not find this an easy time.”

“And yet you left your dreaming in India to come home to discomfort,” said Wilhelm.

“My longing for Germany never left me all the twenty years I was there.  And then I confess that I secretly reproached myself for going away.  It is comfortable to turn one’s back on the Fatherland, and to find more agreeable conditions in a foreign country.  But afterward one tells oneself that only egoists leave their own people fighting against darkness and oppression, and that one has no right to play the traitor to home and belongings, while those left behind are striving bitterly to better their condition.”

The procession of troops was still passing, but the young girls had already left their posts; the stands were beginning to empty, and Wilhelm and Dr. Schrotter tried to break through the crowd and go homeward.  After a short silence Schrotter again went on: 

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said; “in spite of thinking this triumphal procession barbaric, and my ideal being different from that of most people, I was deeply moved to-day with sympathy and admiration.  This generation has achieved something colossal.  My eyes fill with tears when I see these men.  For six or seven years they have shed their blood in these wars without a murmur, they have fought in a hundred battles without taking breath, they have neither counted the cost nor spared their labor, and one feels astounded at living amid such heroes, who seem to belong to a fairy tale.  This generation has done more than its duty, and if now it is weary and will rest for thirty years in peace, surely no one can reproach it.”

Schrotter spoke with emotion, and Wilhelm who would not grieve his friend by a contradiction, repressed a retaliation which rose to his lips, and silently took leave of him.

The life of the community, as of single individuals, went back gradually into its old channels, and so it did with Dr. Schrotter.  He had lived hitherto in an old-fashioned quarter of the town, and now, to be as near as possible to Wilhelm, he rented a house in the Mittelstrasse.  He established a private hospital in the old Schonhauserstrasse, in the midst of artisans and very poor people, and there he spent daily many hours, treating for charity all those who