As the freedom of conscience and the institution of marriage had been discarded so this German faith had scrapped the immortality of the soul, save for the single incongruous doctrine that a child taking his own life does not die but lives on in ceaseless torment in a ghoulish Children's Hell.
As I closed the cursed volume my mind called up a picture of Teutonic hordes pouring from the forests of the North and blotting out what Greece and Rome had builded. From thence my roving fancy tripped over the centuries and lived again with men who cannot die. I stood with Luther at the Diet of Worms. With Kant I sounded the deeps of philosophy. I sailed with Humboldt athwart uncharted seas. I fought with Goethe for the redemption of a soul sold to the Devil. And with Schubert and Heine I sang:
Du bist wie eine Blume,
So hold und schoen und rein,
Betend dass Gott dich erhalte,
So rein und schoen und hold.
But what a cankerous end was here. This people which the world had once loved and honoured was now bred a beast of burden, a domesticated race, saddled and trained to bear upon its back the House of Hohenzollern as the ass bore Balaam. But the German ass wore the blinders that science had made--and saw no angel.
~8~
As I sat musing thus and gazing into the spray of the fountain I glimpsed a grey clad figure, standing in the shadows of a viney bower. Although I could not distinguish her face through the leafy tracery I knew that it was Bertha, and my heart thrilled to think that she had returned to the site of our meeting. Thoroughly ashamed of the faithless doubts that I had so recently entertained of her innocence and sincerity, I arose and hastened toward her. But in making the detour about the pool I lost sight of the grey figure, for she was standing well back in the arbour. As I approached the place where I had seen her I came upon two lovers standing with arms entwined in the path at the pool's edge. Not wishing to disturb them, I turned back through one of the arbours and approached by another path. As I slipped noiselessly along in my felt-soled shoes I heard Bertha's voice, and quite near, through the leafy tracery, I glimpsed the grey of her gown.
"Why with your beauty," came the answering voice of a man, "did you not find a lover from the Royal Level?"
"Because," Bertha's voice replied, "I would not accept them. I could not love them. I could not give myself without love."
"But surely," insisted the man, "you have found a lover here?"
"But I have not," protested the innocent voice, "because I have sought none."