“Ah, my dear Nikkels, the greatest thing in the world has happened! They are marching in Paris, with the tri-colored flag, singing the Marseillaise. Oh, isn’t it wonderful!” Then stretching his arms upward, “Oh, for a glimpse of Paris today.”
The fisherman drew at his pipe, shrugged his shoulders, and walked out. “This fellow Zorn is quite crazy,” he confided to his wife a few moments later.
Zorn was quite crazy that day. He did not take his prescribed sea-bath, could not read, could not write, dodged every acquaintance on the beach, rushed up and down the shore as if possessed.
Lafayette, the tri-colored flag, the Marseillaise! He could think of nothing else. He was intoxicated, delirious. All his resolutions had gone to the winds—all his resolutions for rest and quiet and peace; his hunger for calm reveries and piping melodies was gone. He was aching for strife, for the very vortex of strife. Ah, if he could whip his countrymen into action and arouse them from their sluggish contentment, perhaps they, too, would hoist the tri-colored flag and sing the Marseillaise!
Aux armes, citoyens!
No piping melodies for him, no fantasies, no love ditties!
Aux armes, citoyens! Aux armes!
He would take the lyre into his hands and sing a battle song. He was no Wolfgang von Goethe, playing with metrical verses while the enemy’s cannons were roaring at the city gates! How differently the ocean waves were galloping to the shore today! They were chanting the Marseillaise, they were calling tumultuously:
“Aux armes, citoyens, aux armes!”
The whole ocean was aflame with the fire that was burning in his heart; the mermaids were dancing with joy, giving a thé dansant in honor of the great event. No, no, no rest for him! He was a child of the revolution, rebellion against all tyranny in his blood. He was what he was and could be no other. He would wreathe his head with flowers for the death-struggle to come. Ah, he would smite the pious hypocrites who had crept into the holy of holies to defile it! He would hurl javelins at the tyrants, with their armies of Menschenfresser, who were holding mankind in fetters of steel! With words like flaming stars he would set fire to the palaces of the oppressors and illumine the dingy huts of the enslaved.