“And now,” said Stephen, “why do they not keep their hold?”

Richter sighed.

“We were unused to ruling,” he answered.  “We knew not how to act—­what to do.  You must remember that we were not trained to govern ourselves, as are you of the English race, from children.  Those who have been for centuries ground under heel do not make practical parliamentarians.  No; your heritage is liberty—­you Americans and English; and we Germans must desert our native land to partake of it.”

“And was it not hard to leave?” asked Stephen, gently.

The eyes of the German filled at the recollection, nor did he seem ashamed of his tears.

“I had a poor old father whose life was broken to save the Vaterland, but not his spirit,” he cried, “no, not that.  My father was born in 1797.  God directed my grandfather to send him to the Kolnisches gymnasium, where the great Jahn taught.  Jahn was our Washington, the father of Germany that is to be.

“Then our Fatherland was French.  Our women wore Parisian clothes, and spoke the language; French immorality and atheism had spread like a plague among us Napoleon the vile had taken the sword of our Frederick from Berlin.  It was Father Jahn (so we love to call him), it was Father Jahn who founded the ‘Turnschulen’, that the generations to come might return to simple German ways,—­plain fare, high principles, our native tongue; and the development of the body.  The downfall of the fiend Napoleon and the Vaterland united—­these two his scholars must have written in their hearts.  All summer long, in their black caps and linen pantaloons, they would trudge after him, begging a crust here and a cheese there, to spread his teachings far and wide under the thatched roofs.

“Then came 1811.  I have heard my father tell how in the heat of that year a great red comet burned in the sky, even as that we now see, my friend.  God forbid that this portends blood.  But in the coming spring the French conscripts filled our sacred land like a swarm of locusts, devouring as they went.  And at their head, with the pomp of Darius, rode that destroyer of nations and homes, Napoleon.  What was Germany then?  Ashes.  But the red embers were beneath, fanned by Father Jahn.  Napoleon at Dresden made our princes weep.  Never, even in the days of the Frankish kings, had we been so humbled.  He dragged our young men with him to Russia, and left them to die moaning on the frozen wastes, while he drove off in his sledge.

“It was the next year that Germany rose.  High and low, rich and poor, Jaeger and Landwehr, came flocking into the army, and even the old men, the Landsturm.  Russia was an ally, and later, Austria.  My father, a last of sixteen, was in the Landwehr, under the noble Blucher in Silesia, when they drove the French into the Katzbach and the Neisse, swollen by the rains into torrents.  It had rained until the forests were marshes.  Powder would not burn.  But Blucher, ah, there was a man!  He whipped his great sabre from under his cloak, crying ‘Vorwarts!  Vorwarts!’ And the Landwehr with one great shout slew their enemies with the butts of their muskets until their arms were weary and the bodies were tossed like logs in the foaming waters.  They called Blucher Marachall Vorwarts!