of him as a particular proof of
friendship, that he finally consented to take part in the entrance of
the troops, and to visit once more the city which had so many bitter
associations for him. These last two years--what a different man they
had made of him! And yet--although he was firmly convinced that the
source of every joy was dried up in his innermost heart, and that
henceforth nothing was left to him but a barren satisfaction at duties
conscientiously fulfilled--even he could not altogether escape the
festal mood of this marvelous hour. His handsome face, made bolder and
keener by the hardships of war, lost the sad, hard expression which had
never been absent from it during the whole year; a bright
determination, a quiet earnestness, beamed from his eyes. As he rode
through the triumphal avenue strewn with flowers, amid the chime of
bells and the wildest shouts of joy, he lost the consciousness of his
own hopeless lot, and became merged, as it were, in the great,
pervading spirit of a unique and sublime festival, which would never
come again; and to take part in which, with the Iron Cross on his
breast, and honorable, scarcely healed wounds underneath, was a
privilege which might well be thought to compensate for all the lost
bliss of a young life.

After the entrance ceremonies were over, he wended his way toward the
garden on the Dultplatz, where he thought there would be the least
danger, to-day, of meeting any one of his acquaintances. Here,
surrounded on all sides by the country-folk who had streamed into the
city in great crowds, he sat in the shade of the ash-trees and, like a
dream, the events of the last two years passed in review before him;
from that first Sunday afternoon when he dined here with Jansen and his
new friends, down to the present moment, when he sat in the crowd
solitary and alone, sought by no friendly eye, and merely stared at as
one of that great host which had done honor to its fatherland.

The crowd in the garden had already begun to thin out a little when
Schnetz touched the dreamer on the shoulder. He did not speak a word
about the meeting he had just had with his wife; but such an unwonted
joyousness could be detected in his voice and bearing that for the
first time Felix began to feel a quiet envy of this happy man, who had
been expected and welcomed by some one whom he loved. He, for his part,
would have greatly preferred to leave the town again before night; for
after the firs