He had been quartered in Wobbelin, and shared his room with an Oberjager von Behrenhorst, son of the postmaster-general in Dessau, who had taken part in the battle of Jena as a young lieutenant and returned home with a darkened spirit.

At the summons “To my People,” he had enlisted at once as a private soldier in the Lutzow corps, where he rose rapidly to the rank of Oberjager.  During the war he had often met Langethal and Middendorf; but the quiet, reserved man, prematurely grave for his years, attached himself so closely to Korner that he needed no other friend.

After the death of the poet on the 26th of August, 1813, he moved silently about as though completely crushed.  On the night which followed the 27th he invited his room-mate Langethal to go with him to the body of his friend.  Both went first to the village church, where the dead Jagers lay in two long black rows.  A solemn stillness pervaded the little house of God, which had become during this night the abode of death, and the nocturnal visitors gazed silently at the pallid, rigid features of one lifeless young form after another, but without finding him whom they sought.

During this mute review of corpses it seemed to Langethal as if Death were singing a deep, heartrending choral, and he longed to pray for these young, crushed human blossoms; but his companion led the way into the guard’s little room.  There lay the poet, “the radiance of an angel on his face,” though his body bore many traces of the fury of the battle.  Deeply moved, Langethal stood gazing down upon the form of the man who had died for his native land, while Behrenhorst knelt on the floor beside him, silently giving himself up to the anguish of his soul.  He remained in this attitude a long time, then suddenly started up, threw his arms upward, and exclaimed, “Korner, I’ll follow you!”

With these words Behrenhorst darted out of the little room into the darkness; and a few weeks after he, too, had fallen for the sacred cause of his native land.

They had seen another beloved comrade perish in the battle of Gohrde, a handsome young man of delicate figure and an unusually reserved manner.

Middendorf, with whom he—­his name was Prohaska—­had been on more intimate terms than the others, once asked him, when he timidly avoided the girls and women who cast kindly glances at him, if his heart never beat faster, and received the answer, “I have but one love to give, and that belongs to our native land.”

While the battle was raging, Middendorf was fighting close beside his comrade.  When the enemy fired a volley the others stooped, but Prohaska stood erect, exclaiming, when he was warned, “No bowing!  I’ll make no obeisance to the French!”

A few minutes after, the brave soldier, stricken by a bullet, fell on the greensward.  His friends bore him off the field, and Prohaska—­Eleonore Prohaska—­proved to be a girl!