in the sun of some one's approval. Since that time their name is legion, for they have been relieved of all care for the public welfare. Your masters have already made you into a worldpower, and, while you're earning money whatever way you can, and spending whatever way you like, they will build the fleet? for you—or rather for themselves—which we ourselves at that time would have built. Our poet then knew what you are now only learning: the future of Germany will spring from the furrows which Columbus ploughed."
"So Bismarck has really accomplished something," said Diederich in mild triumph.
"That is just the point, that he has been allowed to do it! At the same time he has done it all in such a matter-of-fact manner, but nominally in the name of his master. We citizens of Forty-Eight were more honest, it seems to me, for then I myself paid the price of my own daring."
"Oh, yes, I know, you were condemned to death," said Diederich, once more impressed.
"I was condemned because I defended the supremacy of the National Parliament against individual authority, and I led the people to revolt in their hour of need. Thus the unity of Germany was in our hearts. It was a matter of conscience, the personal obligation of every individual, by which he was prepared to stand. No! we had no thought of sacrificing German unity. When, defeated and betrayed, I was waiting in this house with my last remaining friends for the King's soldiers, I was still a man, nevertheless, who himself had created an ideal, one of many, but a man. Where are they now?"
The old gentleman stopped and his face assumed an expression as if he were listening. Diederich felt uncomfortably warm, and that he ought not to remain silent any longer. He said: "God be praised, the German people is no longer the nation of poets and thinkers; it has modern and practical ends in view." The other was drawn from his thoughts and pointed to the ceiling.
