teway. This was the
starting-point of the great procession, which was led by two mounted
students in the garb of Wallenstein's soldiers. Five abreast the
torch-bearers approached the Emperor's palace, and before his windows
the Ziethen Hussars wheeled in and out in mystic evolutions. A
labyrinthine series of movements, marked in the darkness only by the
flaming torches, was executed in perfect silence; then a simple hymn of
the Middle Ages was sung with singular effect by these thousands of
young and manly voices; and from the silence which succeeded, at the
call of a student standing in the midst and waving his sword above his
head, there arose a "Three cheers for the Emperor!" while six thousand
torches swung to and fro, and hundreds of flags and ancient banners
waved in the evening air. Again there was silence, when one struck the
National Anthem, which was sung with all heads uncovered, the aged hero
bowing low at his window in acknowledgment until emotion obliged him to
withdraw. An incident soon on every tongue was the Emperor's sending
for a deputation of the students to wait on him, his kind reception of
and conversation with them, and their elation at the honor,
notwithstanding their mortification at the contrast of the smoke-soiled
hands and faces of the torch-bearers with the brilliance of the
Imperial chamber and the full dress of distinguished visitors. Leaving
the Emperor's palace, the procession passed through Unter den Linden
and the Brandenburg Gate to the Thiergarten, where amid a dense and
surging throng the students threw their burning torches in a heap and
sang over the expiring flames, "Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus."
Deputies from all the Universities, dressed in black velvet coats, high
boots, and plumed hats, and bearing fine swords, brought up the rear of
the procession in thirty carriages, with the flags of the old German
towns and Universities floating above them. I watched this torchlight
procession from a second-story window-seat on Unter den Linden, and was
much impressed with the general view, extending from the equestrian
statue of Frederick the Great before the Emperor's palace, where the
entire area was filled with reflected light, for nearly a mile to the
Brandenburg Gate, the various forms of the waving torches on the long
line seeming the very apotheosis of flame. Many of the young men were
dressed in the picturesque taste peculiar to German students. Gay
feathers and unique cap