, but all was cheerfully
done; the light-heartedness of youth did not vanish from their
enthusiastic hearts. There was even no lack of intellectual aliment, for
a little field-library had been established by the exchange of books.
Langethal told us of his night's rest in a ditch, which was to entail
disastrous consequences. Utterly exhausted, sleep overpowered him in the
midst of a pouring rain, and when he awoke he discovered that he was up
to his neck in water. His damp bed--the ditch--had gradually filled, but
the sleep was so profound that even the rising moisture had not roused
him. The very next morning he was attacked with a disease of the eyes, to
which he attributed his subsequent blindness.

On the 26th of August there was a prospect of improvement in the
condition of the corps. Davoust had sent forty wagons of provisions to
Hamburg, and the men were ordered to capture them. The attack was
successful, but at what a price! Theodor Korner, the noble young poet
whose songs will commemorate the deeds of the Lutzow corps so long as
German men and boys sing his "Thou Sword at my Side," or raise their
voices in the refrain of the Lutzow Jagers' song:

"Do you ask the name of yon reckless band? 'Tis Lutzow's black troopers
dashing swift through the land!"

Langethal first saw the body of the author of "Lyre and Sword" and
"Zriny" under an oak at Wobbelin; but he was to see it once more under
quite different circumstances. He has mentioned it in his autobiography,
and I have heard him describe several times his visit to the corpse of
Theodor Korner.

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 bla