He rose, and immediately silence ensued--a compliment not only considered his due as host, but also on account of his personal position.
"While offering a welcome to all my guests," he began, "at the same time I take this opportunity to convey to you a wish which fills me at this present moment. In a short time, the election for the vacancy, which it has become necessary to fill up in our Provincial Diet, will take place, and I now introduce myself as a candidate to you, my guests, the most respected representatives of the district."
"Bravo! bravo!" cried the Landrath, and several gentlemen applauded also, while others, as Wegen remarked, became uneasy, and crumpled their dinner napkins under the table.
"Candid speech must be permitted; I will beg for no vote that is not given to me from free conviction; yet I know that I stand upon the same ground as all my guests. A new political epoch has dawned for Prussia; our Provincial Diets can no longer have any other aim than that of giving place to one general Prussian Diet, and this will one day be dismissed for a free constitution. Prussia must become a Constitutional State, like the advanced ones of the West; that is its vocation. It languishes beneath the contradictory fact that its internal arrangements, its organisations of defence, the regulations of its towns and districts are animated by a Liberal spirit, while the building lacks the necessary consummation. That which Stein, Schön, and Scharnhorst have begun tends to this consummation; it was the signal for supreme promises, and yet the coronation of the building has been left unfinished to the present day. The Bureaucratic Guard-room is to compensate to us for the Chamber of Parliament. The Prussian State is a torso; the educated circles of the people have become aware of it. Like a fresh breath, full of a future, it percolates through the whole nation; who could shut himself up from this vivifying breath? To become security for these recognised rights with power and determination, is the task which I have set to myself, and which I would further in the place where that word has gained a significant power for the State. Through the Provincial Diet to the National Diet is my watchword. Continued furtherance of Stein's and Scharnhorst's arrangements in the advanced spirit of the time! Then Prussia, which, until now, was only a doubtful Great Power, will occupy a position befitting it, and cast its old sword of Brennus, the sword of Frederick the Great, of Blücher and Gneisenau once more into the scale of European destinies. Released from the political followers opposed to the Austrian Chancellor of the State, it will again become the kingdom of Frederick the Great, that rests upon its own strength."
"We are all unanimous thereupon," cried Werner von Schlohitten, and a general jubilant applause proved this unanimity.
"Her von Blanden, he is our man," rang Hermann's deep bass.
"But you will permit us one question?" cried Milbe. "Questions are permitted not only in ombre, and candidates for election may be examined."
"That is my great desire," replied Blanden.
"You are in favour of a National Assembly," continued Milbe; "that is good! A National Assembly is spadille, but there is still a basta, a second trump which we wish to play out in East Prussia. Thunder and lightning! we here are in favour of healthy human understanding, and there in Berlin they want to pull the night-cap over our ears again. We believe in our good Lord, but we are told to believe in all possible miracles. Thus we should come to a nice state of codille with our politics. False piety has become the fashion; our foals are already ordered to graze in these melancholy meadows. Sapperment--we need men who do not love to grope about in such darkness; men like old Dinter, who went about in schools shedding the light of enlightenment. If all the world sits like a dummy, the game of ombre would cease. But we in Prussia still have the best games in our hand, and will not, for a longtime yet, write the world's history in a kettle; we will not be nor remain dark men."
"That we will not, that we will not!" cried all, unanimously.