"Es ist eine Lust, in deiser Zeit zu leben!" cried Paul Habor, as he
walked with Wilhelm and Dr. Schrotter on the first sunny day the
following April. They walked under the lindens full of leaf through the
Thiergarten, and home over the Charlottenburger Brucke.

The spirit in which he uttered Hutten's words was at that time dominant
and far-reaching. It seemed as though people were all enjoying the
honeymoon of the new empire; that they breathed peace and the joy of
life with the air, as if the whole nation inhaled the pleasure of
living, the joy of youth and brave deeds, and that they stood at the
entrance of an incomprehensibly great era, promising to everyone
fabulous heights of happiness.

A sort of feverish growth had sprung up in Berlin, an excitement and
ferment which filled the villas in the west end, and the poor
lodging-houses of the other end of the town: was found too in
councilors' drawing-rooms, and in suburban taverns. New streets seemed
to spring up during the night. Where the hoe and rake of
kitchen-gardens were at work yesterday, to-day was the noise of hammers
and saws, and in the middle of the open fields hundreds of houses
raised their walls and roofs to the sky. It seemed as if the increasing
town expected between to-day and to-morrow a hundred thousand new
inhabitants, and were forced to build houses in breathless haste to
shelter them.

And as a matter of fact the expected throng arrived. Even in the most
distant provinces a curious but powerful attraction drew people to the
capital; artisans and cottages, village shopkeepers, and merchants from
small towns, all rushed there like the inflowing tide. It made one
think of a number of moths blindly fluttering round a candle, or of the
magnetic rock of Eastern fairy tales, irresistibly attracting ships to
wreck themselves. It recalled to one the stories of California at the
time of the gold fever. People's excited imaginations saw a veritable
gold-mine in Berlin. The French indemnity flew to people's heads like
champagne, and in a kind of drunken frenzy every one imagined himself a
millionaire. Some had even seen exhibited a reproduction of the hidden
treasure. The great heap of glittering pieces was certainly there, a
tempting reality, piled up mountains high, millions on millions,
craftily arranged to glitter in the flaring gas-light before their
covetous eyes. The real treasure must be at least as substantial as its
counterfeit. People beg