s native land? They will
notice nothing of it in their villages. The tax-collector and the
gendarme will be just what they were before, and that is all they see
of their native country, yet they are filled with enthusiasm. The fact
exists. It is as clear as noonday. We owe this to the writers who
have given such beautiful pictures of our native land and military
renown, and to the schoolmasters, who have instilled their words into
the souls of the people. Marvellous power of language, which can
incite a prosaic peasant lad to sacrifice life joyfully for an abstract
idea, a fancy."

These were his thoughts,--it can neither be denied nor palliated. But
while they darted clearly and swiftly through his brain, he felt a
mental agitation which surprised and bewildered him. It was a strange
perplexity; he felt ashamed and embarrassed; it seemed as though he had
uttered his thoughts aloud, and a group of people with grave, noble
faces had listened, and were now gazing at him in silence, but with
mingled compassion and contempt. From inaccessible depths of his soul,
into which his sober, critical, mocking reason did not shine, a
mysterious voice appeared to rise, imperiously commanding his
scepticism to be silent. "I am right!" reason ventured to murmur.
"You are wrong!" thundered the voice from the depths. "I will not
consciously permit myself to be made giddy by the dizziness of romantic
self-deception!" answered reason--but now Prince Louis felt as though
some stranger, from whom he must turn indignantly, was uttering the
words.

The Third Westphalian covered the opposite ascent. The foremost ranks
were already at the top and paused a moment, for a murderous fire
greeted the first heads which appeared, and several men, mortally
wounded, rolled down again. But the rest pressed on, using both hands
and feet to climb the hill, whose ascent would have been mere sport for
fresh youths, skilled in gymnastic exercises, but which must have
seemed terribly steep to harassed, exhausted troops. As they worked
their way upward with the utmost zeal, evidently striving to excel one
another, Prince Louis thought of some stanzas in the Winter Tale of his
favorite author, Heine:

"That lovable, worthy Westphalian race,
I ever have loved it extremely,
A nation so firm, so faithful, so true,
Ne'er given to boasting unseemly.
How proudly they stood with their lionlike hearts
In the noble science of fencing"--[1]