And at last these came, the men of the people, who had taken all their capital, their bare lives, in their hand, and gone forth to offer it up for the Fatherland. They advanced with a sound as of bursting trumpets, half hidden by dense columns of dust. Not exalted and splendid beings as they had often been painted in the imagination of the "stay-at-homes," with a halo of diamonds flashing round their heads, and a cloak flung proudly like a toga round their shoulders. No; they were faded and haggard, tired as overdriven horses, covered with vermin, filthy and in rags; their beards matted with sweat and dust. This was the plight in which they came home. Some were so emaciated and ghastly pale that they looked as if they could hardly drag one weary foot after the other; others wore a greedy, brutalised expression, and the reflection of the lurid glare of war seemed yet to linger in their sunken, hollow eyes. They held their knotty fists still clenched in the habitual cramp of murderous lust. Only here and there shone tears of pure, inspired emotion; only here and there hands were folded on the butt-end of muskets in reverent, grateful prayer. But all were welcome, and none were too coarse and hardened by their work of blood and revenge to find balm in the tears and kisses of their loved ones, and to greet with hope the dawn of purer times. Of course it could not be expected that passions which had been lashed into such abnormal and furious activity, would all at once calm down and slumber again. The hand that has wielded a sword needs time before it can accustom itself to the plough and scythe, and not every man knows how to forget immediately the wild licence of the camp in the hallowed atmosphere of home.
Every peace is followed by a period of delirium. It was thus in Germany in anno '14. That year, from which to this generation nothing has descended but the echo of a unison of pæans, swelling organ-strains, and clash of bells, was in reality more remarkable for tyranny and crime than any year before or since. More especially was this the case in districts where before the war the overweening arrogance and cruelty of the French occupier had been most heavily felt. Here the beast was let loose in man. The senses of those who stayed at home had been so inflamed by the scent of blood from distant battle-fields, and the smoke of burning villages, that they conjured up before their mental eyes scenes of horror and devastation at which they had not been present. Many thirsted for vengeance on secret wrongs, on acts of cowardice and treachery as yet unexpiated. After all, it seemed as if the awakened fervour of patriotism, the flowing streams of freshly-spilled blood, could not suffice even now to wipe out the memory of the shame and humiliation of previous years.
No one had any suspicion, then, that the Corsican vulture, set fast in his island cage, was already beginning to sharpen his iron beak, preparatory to gnawing through its bars, and that before his final capture thousands of veins were yet to be opened and drained of their blood.
CHAPTER II
One August day in this memorable year, a party of young men were gathered together in the parlour of a large country house.
The oak table round which they were seated presented a goodly array of tankards, and short, bulky bottles containing schnaps. Their faces, flushed with brandy and enthusiasm, were almost entirely concealed from view by the dense clouds of smoke they puffed from their huge pipes.
They were defenders of their country only lately returned home, and were revelling in reminiscences of the war. There was that distinct family likeness among them which equality in birth, breeding, and education often stamps on men between whom there exists no tie of blood-relationship.
Warfare had coarsened their honest, healthy countenances, and left its mark there in many a disfiguring scar and gash. Two or three still wore their arms in slings, and evidently none of them had as yet made up their minds to lay aside the black, frogged military coat to which they had become so proudly accustomed. For the most part they were well-to-do yeomen belonging to the village of Heide and its outlying hamlets, and though their homes were scattered they were united in a strong bond of neighbourly friendship. Some still lived on their fathers' patrimony, others had come into their own estate. It had never been their lot to experience the pinch of poverty, to till the soil and follow the plough, and so they had remained unaffected by the great changes Stein's new code a few years before had brought about in the position of the peasantry. In the spring, when the King's appeal to his subjects had resounded through the land, they could afford to leave their crops and, like the sons of the nobility, hurry with their own arms and their own horses to enlist in the ranks of the volunteer Jägers.
Only one member of the little group apparently belonged to another station in life. He occupied the one easy-chair the house boasted, an ungainly piece of upholstery, much the worse for wear.
His face was pale, somewhat sallow in colouring. The features were refined and delicately chiselled. The brown, melancholy eyes were shaded by long black lashes, which when he looked down cast a heavy fringe of shadow on his thin cheeks. Though he must certainly have been the youngest of them all, having hardly completed his twenty-second year, he looked like a man who had long ago ceased to take any pleasure in the mere frivolities of life.