never left me all the twenty years I was there.
And then I confess that I secretly reproached myself for going away. It
is comfortable to turn one's back on the Fatherland, and to find more
agreeable conditions in a foreign country. But afterward one tells
oneself that only egoists leave their own people fighting against
darkness and oppression, and that one has no right to play the traitor
to home and belongings, while those left behind are striving bitterly
to better their condition."

The procession of troops was still passing, but the young girls had
already left their posts; the stands were beginning to empty, and
Wilhelm and Dr. Schrotter tried to break through the crowd and go
homeward. After a short silence Schrotter again went on:

"Don't misunderstand me," he said; "in spite of thinking this triumphal
procession barbaric, and my ideal being different from that of most
people, I was deeply moved to-day with sympathy and admiration. This
generation has achieved something colossal. My eyes fill with tears
when I see these men. For six or seven years they have shed their blood
in these wars without a murmur, they have fought in a hundred battles
without taking breath, they have neither counted the cost nor spared
their labor, and one feels astounded at living amid such heroes, who
seem to belong to a fairy tale. This generation has done more than its
duty, and if now it is weary and will rest for thirty years in peace,
surely no one can reproach it."

Schrotter spoke with emotion, and Wilhelm who would not grieve his
friend by a contradiction, repressed a retaliation which rose to his
lips, and silently took leave of him.

The life of the community, as of single individuals, went back
gradually into its old channels, and so it did with Dr. Schrotter. He
had lived hitherto in an old-fashioned quarter of the town, and now, to
be as near as possible to Wilhelm, he rented a house in the
Mittelstrasse. He established a private hospital in the old
Schonhauserstrasse, in the midst of artisans and very poor people, and
there he spent daily many hours, treating for charity all those who
came to him for help. He soon had a larger attendance than was
comfortable, and had to extend the work, without which he could not
have lived. He found endless opportunities of relieving misery and
distress in this poor quarter of the town, and as he was a rich man,
and independent of his own creature comforts, he could put his
philoso