“But my dear girl, Martha, such savage feelings do not suit the stage of our civilisation, which has grown more cultured and more humane.”
“Rather say that our present stage of civilisation does not suit the savagery which has come down to us from old times. As long as this savagery, that is, so long as the spirit of war is not cast out, our much-valued ‘humanity’ cannot be looked on as reasonable. For surely now as to the speech you made just now, in which you assured Prince Henry that you would love him as a son-in-law and hate him as a Prussian, value him dearly as a man, and abominate him as an officer, that you give him your paternal blessing with pleasure, and at the same time allow him the right, in given circumstances, of firing on you, forgive me, my dear father, but will you really uphold this as reasonable?”
“What are you saying? I do not catch a word.”
The favourite deafness had again come on at the right moment.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
After a few days all became quiet again at Grumitz. The soldiers quartered on us had to march off, and Conrad had been ordered to join his regiment. Lori Griesbach and the Minister had already departed before.
The marriage of my two sisters had been postponed till October. Both were to be married on the same day at Grumitz. Prince Henry was to quit the service; now that he had finished this glorious campaign in which he had earned distinction, he could easily do this, and so repose on his laurels, and on his estates.
The partings of the two pairs of lovers were painful and joyful at the same time. They promised to write to each other every day, and the certain prospect of bliss so near made the anguish of parting seem not so severe.
Certain prospect of bliss? There is in reality no such thing, and assuredly least of all in seasons of war. Then misfortunes hover around “as thick as the swarms of gnats in the air,” and the chances that you may be standing on a spot that will be spared by the descending scourge are at best but small.
True, the war was over. That is, it had been proclaimed that peace was concluded. A word is sufficient to unchain the horrors, and thence one is apt to think that a word will also suffice to remove them again, but no spell has in reality that power. Hostilities may be suspended, and yet hostility may persist. The seed of future war is sown, and the fruit of the war just ended spreads still further, in wretchedness, savagery, and plagues. Yes, no falsehood and no “not thinking of it” was any good now, the cholera was raging through the country.