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This was a greeting of the king not only to his Berliners, but to Prussia and to the world; he was now "the Great Frederick," and all Europe listened when he spake. Frederick's greeting read thus: "It is known to all Europe that I have provided every possible comfort to all officers who are prisoners of war.
Like a good South German he hated Prussia and all its works, and his tales were mostly of Berliners who had wandered thither and been abused; of the gentleman who had been told, and believed, that the "gams" slept by hooking its horns into crevices of the rock, swinging thus at ease, over precipices; of another whom Federl once deterred from going on the mountains by telling how a chamois, if enraged, charged and butted; of a third who went home glad to have learned that the chamois produced their peculiar call by bringing up a hind leg and whistling through the hoof.
Now a strongly built wall of masonry lines the banks of this ditch, which has been transformed into a deep canal bordered by the handsome houses of the Konigin Augustastrasse, and along which pass countless heavily laden barges called by the Berliners "Zillen."
The second morning the waiter who took his order recognized him and asked, "Wie gestern?" and from this he argued an affectionate constancy in the Berliners, and a hospitable observance of the tastes of strangers.
All was now over the curtain had fallen: Gotzkowsky had run his brilliant career, and retired into oblivion. His fall was for some days the topic of conversation of the good Berliners; but it was soon superseded by some other novelty, and without either sympathy or ill-feeling they passed by the deserted house with the closed windows which had once been Gotzkowsky's residence.
Even his mother-in-law was suffused with softer tints through the mist of tears. She at least appreciated him, had fought tooth and nail for him, while these gross Berliners ! He clenched his fists in fury: the full force of the injustice came home to him afresh; his palms burnt, his brow was racked with shooting pains.
She was truly lovely, and the good Berliners, who had received her with such hearty greetings when she appeared with the prince on the balcony, or showed herself to the people in an open carriage, declared there could be no happier couple than the prince and his wife; they declared that the large, dark eyes of the princess rested upon the prince with inexpressible tenderness, and that the prince always returned her glance with a joyous smile.
Yet a few days more and the Berliners had risen and triumphed, only stopping short of chasing their king away because he conceded all they were pleased to require of him; then came insurrection in Sicily, insurrection in Lombardy, insurrection in Milan, insurrection in Hungary in short, the revolutionary movement became general throughout Europe, and thrones and principalities were tumbling and tottering in all directions.
The much-ridiculed choice of our old romantic unheraldic colours, black, red and gold, instead of the bodiless and soulless colours under which we waged the war, was, among the whirling follies of the time, a faint symbolic movement of our better mind. We must reunite ourselves with the days before we ceased to be Germans and became Berliners. What we need is Spirit.
The Berliners were, therefore, quite happy, and delighted to hear the hollow sound of the drum, and the Russian word of command. A regiment of Russian soldiers marched past the corner of the Bishop Street, toward the market-place. They ranged themselves in two long lines, leaving a lane between them, just wide enough for a man to pass through.
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