Early yesterday, on his return from a lecture tour, he succumbed to an acute heart trouble. That is all I know as yet; I only know that a gap is made in my life, for I have had a warm love for this noble man, and have looked up to him in grateful admiration. His influence will continue, but what he would have yet done and accomplished with the magical power of his personality—that is lost. Moritz von Egidy, farewell!

Some time afterwards I received the following letter from his son:[[28]]

Marine School, Kiel, March 17, 1899

My dear Baroness:

Pardon me for my long delay in thanking you for the February number of your periodical; now the receipt of a second copy impels me to write to you at once.

What a comforting expression you have found for your loss and ours in those words, “The consciousness that an Egidy was here”;[[29]] truly and with all my heart I thank you for those words; they are worth infinitely more to me than many, many words, dear and well meant though they might be, because—this may sound far enough from altruistic, but nevertheless is not to remain unspoken—because they animate a thought which lay in my mind but which I had not yet found any expression for. I do not know whether you know this immediate feeling of thankfulness which comes over one in such a case, and which I should like to make you understand.

All the more I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that you have been misinformed about father’s funeral, particularly because the information is so entirely contrary to father’s spirit. There is a lack of recognition of the courageous, magnanimous act of the priest, Court Chaplain Rogge, who appears in a wholly false light, from the fact that he is only mentioned on the occasion when, in accordance with the ritual of our Church (in which father was still a member in spite of everything), he pronounced the blessing.

Yes, indeed, it was a courageous act for a royal Prussian court chaplain, who, perhaps, the very next day preached before the Emperor in the Potsdam Garrison church, to say such words as you will find in the February number of Versöhnung, and the impression of this fine act of his on the assembly was quite extraordinary, as was openly acknowledged by men who, perhaps for the first time in dozens of years, were listening again to a minister, and who had come there in the secret apprehension of having their feelings of love for my father hurt in some way.

Yes, the long way to the grave; but still it infused such a firm, steadfast trust into our hearts as I escorted my splendid mother along; our eyes were constantly attracted by the dazzling white heron plume on the fur hussar cap as it nodded in front of us, keeping time to the step of the bearers; the white plume, pointing upward, seemed to us a symbol in the falling shadows of the evening. You know his motto: “Forward! upward!”

Especially interesting to me was the news on page [61] about the resolution of the organized English workingmen; for you see on the very evening before I got the book I had quite a long discussion with the professor who lectures for us on history here at the Academy. He asserts that, in consequence of the English election law, the predominant power in parliament will more and more pass over to the side of the masses, i.e. the workingmen; and herein, he says, lies the chief danger for peace, for the instinct of the masses is always directed to war, especially in England, where the people’s heads are turned by their imperialistic notions, joined with an ever more and more pronounced national conceit. A more striking answer to this assertion than the so-called resolution I can scarcely imagine.