"Hm. Very good," repeated Wulckow, blinking. Diederich played his trump card.
"Under Klüsing, sir, Gausenfeld is a breeding ground of revolution. Amongst his eight hundred workmen there is not one who ever votes for any one but a Social Democrat."
"Well, and what about your men?"
Diederich struck his chest. "God is my witness that I would rather shut the whole shop to-day, and go into poverty with my family, than keep one single man in my employment whom I knew to be unpatriotic."
"Most excellent sentiments," said Wulckow. Diederich looked at him with candid eyes. "I only take people who have been in the army. Forty of them served in the war. I no longer employ young men since that affair with the workman whom the sentry laid low on the field of honour, as His Majesty was pleased to state, after the fellow and his girl, behind my rags—"
Wulckow interrupted: "That's your funeral, my little man."
Diederich did not allow his plan to be spoiled. "There shall be no revolution hatched in my rags. In yours, I mean in politics, it is different. There we can use the revolution so that out of the rags of Liberalism, white patriotic paper may come." He looked exceedingly profound, but Wulckow did not seem impressed. His smile was terrible.
"My boy, I wasn't born yesterday. Let me hear what you have worked out with your machinist."
When he saw Diederich giving ground, Wulckow continued: "He is also one of your old soldiers, Mr. Councillor?"
Diederich gulped, but saw there was no use beating any more about the bush. He spoke with determination at first, but his voice became quick and nervous. "The man wants to go into the Reichstag, and from the national standpoint he is better than Heuteufel. In the first place, many Liberals will turn patriotic out of fear, and in the second, if Napoleon
