In his cold, old-fashioned, bachelor apartment Herr von Barnim held a private and confidential conclave. His political objective was a permanent system of popular representation as in the happy Middle Ages: knights, clergy, craftsmen and artisans. As the Emperor had rightly insisted, the crafts would have to be restored to the dignity which they enjoyed before the Thirty Years' War. The guilds were to cultivate religion and morals. Diederich expressed the warmest approval. The idea fully corresponded with his tendency, as a registered member of a profession and a gentleman of rank, to take his stand in life collectively rather than personally. He already pictured himself as the delegate of the paper industry. Herr von Barnim frankly excluded their Jewish fellow-citizens from his social order. Were they not the root of all disorder and revolution, of confusion and disrespectfulness, the principle of evil itself? His pious face was convulsed with hatred and Diederich felt with him.
"When all is said and done," he remarked, "we wield the power and can throw them out. The German army—"
"That's just it," cried Herr von Barnim, who was walking up and down the room. "Did we wage the glorious war in order to sell my family estate to a gentleman named Frankfurter?"
While Diederich maintained a disturbed silence, there was a ring and Herr von Barnim said: "This is my barber; I must tackle him also." He noticed Diederich's look of disappointment and added:
"Of course with such a man I talk differently. But each one of us must do his bit against the Social Democrats, and bring the common people into the camp of our Christian Emperor. You must do yours!" Thereupon Diederich took his leave. He heard the barber say:
"Another old customer, sir, has gone over to Liebling just because Liebling now has marble fittings."
When Diederich reported to Wiebel the latter said:
"That is all very well, and I have a particular regard for the idealistic viewpoint of my friend, von Barnim, but in the long run it will not get us anywhere. Stocker, you know, also made his damned experiments with democracy at the Ice Palace. Whether it was Christian or un-Christian democracy, I don't know. Things have got too far for that. To-day only one course is still open: To hit out hard so long as we have the power."
Greatly relieved Diederich agreed with him. To go round converting Christians had at once struck him as rather laborious.
"I will attend to the Social Democrats, the Emperor has said." Wiebel's eyes gleamed with a cat-like ferocity. "Now what more do you want? The soldiers have been given their orders, and it may happen that they will have to fire on their beloved relatives. What of it? I tell you, my dear fellow, we are on the eve of great events."
Diederich showed signs of excited curiosity.
"My cousin, von Klappke—" Wiebel paused and Diederich clicked his heels—"has told me things which are not yet ripe for publication. Suffice it to say that His Majesty's statement yesterday, that the grumblers should kindly shake the dust of Germany from the soles of their feet, was a damnably serious warning."
"Is that a fact? Do you really think so?" said Diederich. "Then it is the devil's own luck that I have to leave His Majesty's service just at this moment. I am not ashamed to say that I would have done my whole duty against the do mestic enemy. One thing I do know, the Emperor can rely upon the army."
I During those icy cold days of February, 1892, he went about the streets a great deal, in the expectation of great events. Along Unter den Linden something was afoot, but what it was could not yet be seen. Mounted police held the ends of the streets and waited. Pedestrians pointed to this display of force. "The unemployed!" People stood still to watch them approaching. They came from a northerly direction, marching slowly in small sections. When they reached Unter den Linden they hesitated, as if lost, took counsel by an exchange of glances, and turned off towards the Castle. There they stood in silence, their hands in their pockets, while the wheels of the cars splashed them with mud, and they hunched up their shoulders beneath the rain which fell on their faded overcoats. Many of them turned to look at passing officers, at the ladies in their carriages, at the long fur coats of the gentlemen hurrying from Burgstrasse. Their faces were expressionless, neither threatening nor even curious: not as if they wanted to see, but as if they wanted to be seen. Others never moved an eye from the windows of the Castle. The rain trickled down from their upturned faces. The horse of a shouting policeman drove them on further across the street to the next corner—but they stood still again, and the world seemed to sink down between those broad hollow faces, lit by the livid gleam of evening, and the stern walls beyond them which were already enveloped in darkness.
"I do not understand," said Diederich, "why the police do not take more energetic measures. That is certainly a rebellious crew."
"Don't you worry," Wiebel replied, "they have received exact instructions. Believe me, the authorities have their own well-developed plans. It is not always desirable to suppress at the outset such excrescences on the body politic. When they have been allowed to ripen, then a radical operation can be performed."
The ripening process to which Wiebel referred increased daily, and on the 26th it was completed. The demonstrations of the unemployed seemed more conscious of their objective. When they were driven back into one of the northern streets they overflowed into the next, and, before they could be cut off, they surged forward again in increased numbers. The processions all met at Unter den Linden, and as often as they were separated they ran together again. They reached the Castle, were driven back, and reached it again, silent and irresistible, like a river overflowing its banks. The traffic was blocked, the stream of pedestrians was banked up until it flowed over slowly into the flood which submerged the square; into this turbid, discoloured sea of poverty, rolling up in clammy waves, emitting subdued noises and throwing up, like the masts of sunken ships, poles bearing banners: "Bread! Work!" Here and there a more distinct rumbling broke out of the depths: "Bread! Work!" Swelling above the crowd it rolled off like a thunder-cloud: "Bread! Work!" The mounted police attack, the sea foams up and subsides, while women's voices shrilly cry like signals above the uproar: "Bread! Work!"
They are swept along, carrying with them the curious spectators standing on the Friederich monument. Their mouths are wide open; dust rises from the minor officials whose way to the office has been blocked, as if their clothes had been beaten. A distorted face, unknown to Diederich, shouts at him: "Here's something different! Now we are going for the Jews!"—and the face disappears before he remembers that it is Herr von Barnim. He tries to follow him, but in a big rush is thrown far across the road in front of a cafe, where he hears the crash of the broken windows and a workman shouting: "They fired me out of here lately with my thirty pfennig, because I had not got a silk hat on."—With him Diederich is forced in through the window, between the overturned tables and on to the floor, where they trip over broken glass, crushing against one another and howling. "No more in here! We must have air!" But still they clamber in. "The police are charging!" In the middle of the street, a free passage is miraculously made, as if for a triumphant procession. Then someone cries: "There goes Emperor William!"
Diederich found himself once more on the street. No one knew how it happened that they could suddenly move along in a solid mass the whole width of the street, and on both sides, right up to the flanks of the horse on which the Emperor sat—the Emperor himself. The people looked at him and followed him. Shouting masses were dissolved and swept along. Every one looked at him. A dark pushing mob without form, without plan, without limit, and bright above it a young man in a helmet: the Emperor. They looked. They had brought him down from his Castle. They had shouted: "Bread! Work!" until he had come. Nothing had been changed, except that he was there, and yet they were marching as if to a review of the troops at the