Lay Down Your Arms

shore? Happy for those who in such circumstances can raise their eyes with joy to heaven and send up warm thanks to their Guide above. By this thanksgiving, which, because it is spoken in humility, they take to be humble, and of which they have no conception how arrogant and self-important it is in reality, they feel themselves relieved, inasmuch as they have, according to their own opinion, given a sufficient discharge for the benefit which has accrued to them, and which they call grace and favour. I could not put myself in that position. When I thought of the wretches whom I had seen in those abodes of misery, and when I thought of the lamentable mothers and wives whose dear ones had been hurried into torture and death by the same destiny as had so favoured me⁠—when I thought of this I found it impossible to be so immodest as to take this favour as having been sent by God, and one for which I was entitled to give thanks. It appeared to me that just as, a little while before, Frau Walter, our housekeeper, had swept her broom over a cupboard on which a swarm of ants who scented sugar were collected, so fate had swept over the Bohemian battlefields. The poor busy black things were mostly crushed, killed, scattered; but a few remained uninjured. Now, would it have been reasonable and proper in them if they had sent up their heartfelt thanks for this to Frau Walter? No. I could not entirely banish the woe out of my heart by means of the joy of meeting again, however great that were. I neither could nor did I wish to do so. I was not able to help⁠—to dress wounds, nurse, wait on the sick⁠—like those sisters of mercy and the courageous Frau Simon had done; my strength was not sufficient for that. But the mercy which consists in compassion, that I had offered up to my poor brother-men, and that I could not withdraw from them again in my selfish contentment. I could not forget.

But if I might not triumph and give thanks yet I well might love⁠—might clasp the beloved one to my heart with a hundredfold the former tenderness. “Oh Frederick, Frederick!” I repeated amidst our tears and caresses, “have I got you again?”

“And you wanted to seek me out and nurse me? How heroic and how foolish, Martha!”

“Foolish! Yes, there I agree with you. The appealing voice which drew me on was imagination⁠—superstition⁠—for you were not calling for me. But heroic? No. If you knew how cowardly I showed myself when face to face with misery! It was only you, if you had been lying there, that I could have nursed. I have seen horrors, Frederick, that I can never forget. Oh! this beautiful world of ours, how can people so spoil it, Frederick? A world in which two beings can so love each other as you and I do, in which there can glow such a fire of bliss as is our union, how can it be so foolish as to rake up the flames of hate which brings death and woe in its train?”

“I also have seen something horrible, Martha⁠—something that I can never forget. Just think of Godfrey v. Tessow rushing wildly upon me with uplifted sword⁠—it was in the cavalry action at Sadowa.”

“Aunt Rosalie’s son?”

“The same; he recognised me in time, and let the blade sink which he had already raised.”

“He acted in that directly contrary to his duty. How? To spare an enemy of his king and country, under the worthless pretext that he was his own dear friend and cousin.”

“Poor fellow! He had scarcely let his arm fall when a sabre whistled over his head. It was my next man, a young officer, who wanted to defend his lieutenant-colonel, and⁠—”

Frederick stopped and covered his face with both hands.

“Killed?” I asked shuddering. He nodded.

“Mamma, mamma,” resounded from the next room, and the door was burst open. It was my sister Lilly, leading little Rudolf by the hand.

“Forgive me if I interrupt your tête-à-tête on meeting again, but this boy was too ardently eager to see his mamma to be denied.”

I hastened to the child and pressed him passionately to my heart. Ah! poor, poor Aunt Rosalie!

On the very same day the surgeon who had been summoned by telegraph from Vienna arrived at the château and undertook the treatment of Frederick’s wound. Six weeks of the most perfect rest, and his cure would be complete.

That my husband should quit the service was a point perfectly settled between us two. Of course, this could not be carried out till the war was at an end. The war might, however, be practically looked on as over. After the renunciation of Venice the conflict with Italy was ended, Napoleon’s friendship secured, and we should be in a position to conclude peace on moderate terms with the northern conqueror. Our emperor himself was most ardently desirous to put an end to the unlucky campaign, and would not expose his capital to a siege also. The Prussian victories in the rest of Germany, joined to the entry of the Prussians into Frankfort-on-the-Main which took place on July 16, invested our adversaries with a halo, which, like all success, extorted admiration even from our countrymen, and awoke a sort of belief that it was an historical mission which was thus being carried out by Prussia through the battles she had won. The words “suspension of hostilities,” “peace,” having been once let drop, one could count on their taking effect as certainly as in the times when a threatening of war has once found vent one may reckon on its breaking out sooner or later. Even my father himself admitted that under the stress of circumstances a suspension of hostilities was desirable; the army was debilitated, the superiority of the needle-gun must be recognised, and an advance of the enemy’s troops on the capital, the blockade