cal constituents, their speeches, their action, their enthusiasm,
and their indignation. But he had never kicked over the traces, for
during the course of a rather eventful life he had made the discovery
that contempt and an icy disposition are invaluable adjuncts to any one
who wishes to control men.

Even though he had fought at the beginning of his career with all the
eloquence and buoyancy at his command for freedom and tolerance, it
remained a fact that he regarded liberalism as nothing more than a
newspaper term, a means of keeping men busy who were too indolent to
think for themselves, and a source of obstructive annoyance to the
openly hated but secretly admired Bismarck.

He had wielded a power in full consciousness of the lie he was acting,
and had done it solely by gestures, calculations, and political
adroitness. This will do for a while, but in time it eats into the
marrow of one's life.

In his eyes nothing was of value except the law, unwritten to be sure,
but of immemorial duration, that subjects the little to the big, the
weak to the strong, the immature to the experienced, the poor to the
rich. In accordance with this law humanity for him was divided into two
camps: those who submitted to the law, and the undesirable citizens who
rebelled against the law.

And of these undesirable citizens his son Eberhard was the most
undesirable.

With this stinging, painful thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling
of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and
filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and
consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the
figure of his son a picture of evil incarnate.

He visualised him in dissipation and depravity of every kind and degree;
he saw him sinking lower and lower, a traitor to his family name; as if
in a dream that appeases the sense of obscene horror, he saw him in
league with the abandoned and proscribed, associating with thieves,
street bandits, high-flying swindlers, counterfeiters, anarchists,
prostitutes, and literati. He saw him in dirty dives, a fugitive from
justice wandering along the highway, drunk in a gambling den, a beggar
at a fair, and a prisoner at the bar.

His determination to wait until the degenerate representative of the
human family had been stigmatised by all the world he finally abandoned.
His impatience to find peace, to throw off the mask, to rid himself
completely of a