United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"And thus speaks my son of the man who has injured and robbed his mother!" exclaimed she indignantly. "My son would press his hand who has spilled such seas of Austrian blood would worship as a hero the enemy of his race! But so long as I reign in Austria, no Hapsburger shall condescend to give the hand to a Hohenzollern. There is an old feud between our houses; it cannot be healed."
Henceforth the head of the Hohenzollern family could sign himself margrave and elector of Brandenburg, duke of Cleves, and duke of Prussia. In the last-named role, he was a vassal of the king of Poland; in the others, of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Still further, the laurel for this crown he himself must have obtained during the night from the electoral greenhouse. The electress thinks, "As true as I'm alive, this man is ill!" an opinion in which the princess Natalie concurs. "He needs the doctor." But Hohenzollern, his best friend, answers coolly, "He is perfectly well. It is nothing but a mere trick of his mind."
These positions were in advance of the Hohenzollern redoubt which our troops were to attack. It was not an easy task. It was hellish.
"This lady, then, followed the Hohenzollern from the Plassenburg to Baireuth and Berlin?" asked Napoleon. "For she appears sometimes at Berlin, does she not?" "At Berlin, and all places where members of the house of Hohenzollern, the descendants of the Burgraves of Nuremberg, are about to die." "Oh, the dear lady, then, appears only to the family of the Hohenzollern," exclaimed Napoleon, smiling.
He is to-day the same Hohenzollern he was the day he mounted the throne, observing exactly the same attitude to the world abroad and to his folk at home, tenacious of exactly the same principles, enunciating exactly the same views in politics, religion, morals, and art in everything which concerns the foundations of social life.
But the spirit of the great Hohenzollern smelt from the first of the charnel. He came out to his first victory like one broken by defeats; his strength was stripped to the bone and fearful as a fleshless resurrection; for the worst of what could come had already befallen him. The very construction of his kingship was built upon the destruction of his manhood.
The Emperor can do much for the general peace. He is not to lend his name to cover this usurpation." And so the concluding interview terminated in an exchange of threats rather than with any hope of accommodation. Hohenzollern used as high language to the ministers as to the monarch, and received payment in the same coin.
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.
Look on that high Hohenzollern hill- top: she also is of the line of those who help to found illustrious Houses: what are you? I turned to my father and stared him in the face. What was he? Were we not losing precious time in not prosecuting his suit? I put this question to him, believing that it would sound as too remote from my thoughts to betray them.
Word Of The Day