“Well, we shall have some time to wait for that,” my father broke in. “As long as there are persons of quality anywhere—”
“But that too may not perhaps be forever,” hinted the doctor.
“Holloa! you would not get rid of rank, Mr. Radical?” cried my father.
“Well, I would, of feudal rank. The future has no need for ‘nobility.’ ”
“So much the more need for noble men,” said Frederick in confirmation.
“And this new race will put up with their slaps on the face?”
“First of all they will give none—”
“And will not defend themselves if a neighbouring state makes a hostile attack on them?”
“There will be no attacks from neighbouring states, no more than our country seats now are besieged by neighbouring citizens. As the nobleman no longer needs armed squires to defend his castle—”
“So the state of the future will dispense with its armed hosts? What will become then of you lieutenant-colonels?”
“What has become of the squires?”
And so the old dispute began again, and was prolonged for some time longer. I hung with delight on Frederick’s lips. It did me more good than I can say to see the cause of noble humanity so firmly and so confidently defended; and in spirit I applied to himself the name he had just used—“noble man.”
We stayed a fortnight longer in Vienna. But it was by no means a pleasant holiday to me. This fatal “prospect of war,” which now filled all newspapers and all conversations, robbed me of all pleasure in my life. As often as I thought of any of the things of which my happiness was made up, and especially my possession of a husband who was becoming daily dearer to me, so often was I reminded also of the uncertainty, of the imminent danger which hung over all my happiness, in view of the war which was looming in sight. And so I could not, as the saying is, “feel myself comfortable.” Of the accidents of sickness and death, conflagrations, inundations, in short, all the menaces of Nature and the elements, there are sufficient; but one has habituated oneself not to think about them, and one lives in a certain sense of security in spite of these dangers. But how is it that men have created for themselves other dangers arbitrarily devised by themselves, and thus of their own will and in pure wantonness thrown into artificial eruption the volcanic soil on which the happiness of this life is founded? It is true that people have also accustomed themselves to think of war too as a natural phenomenon, and to speak of it as eluding calculation in the same category with the earthquake or drought—and therefore to think of it as little as possible. But I could no longer bring myself to this way of looking at it. The question, of which Frederick had once spoken: “Must it then be so?” I had often answered with a negative in the case of war—and at this time instead of resignation I felt pain and vexation—I should have liked to shout out to them all: “Do not do it; do not do it.” This business of Schleswig-Holstein and the Danish constitution, what did it matter to us? Whether the “Protocol-Prince” abolished the fundamental law of November 13, 1863, or confirmed it, what did it matter to us? Yet all the journals and speeches at that time were full of discussions on this matter, as if it were the most important, most decisive, most universally comprehensive question in the world, so that in comparison with it the query “Are our husbands and sons to be shot dead?” ought not even to be considered. Only at intervals could I myself for a moment feel anyhow reconciled to this state of things, i.e., when the conception of “duty” came directly before my soul. It was true, no doubt, we belonged to the German Bund, and, in common with our brothers of Germany combined in that society, we were bound to fight for the rights of German brothers who were being oppressed. The principle of nationality was no doubt a thing that with elemental force demanded its field of action, and therefore from this point of view the thing must be. By sticking to this idea the painful indignation of my soul subsided a little. Had I been able to foresee how, two years later, the whole of this German band of brothers would be broken up by the bitterest enmity, that then the hatred of Prussia would have become far more burning in Austria than the hatred of Denmark now was, I should have recognised even so early what I learned to know later on, that the motives which are adduced in order to justify hostilities are nothing but phrases—phrases and pretexts.
New-Year’s eve we again spent in my father’s house. As it struck twelve he raised his glass.
“May the campaign which is before us in this new year be a glorious one for our arms,” he said solemnly; and at these words I put my glass, which I had just lifted up, down on the table again. “And,” he concluded, “may our dear ones be spared to us!”
In that I concurred.
“Why did you not drink to the first half of my toast, Martha?”
“Because I can have no wish about a campaign, except that it may never occur.”
When we had got back into the hotel, and into our bedroom, I threw myself on Frederick’s neck.
“My own one!
