The Patrioteer. Luiz Heinrich Mann

in ruthless energy. It seemed to him almost unlikely that any of the others had still perhaps some soft spots left in them. He alone was so afflicted by the influence of his mother. A girl like Agnes, who was just as foolish as his mother, would have rendered him unfit for these difficult times. These difficult times, the phrase always reminded Diederich of Unter den Linden with its mob of unemployed, women and children, of want and fear and disorder—and all that quelled, tamed into cheering, by the power, the all-embracing superhuman power, massive and flashing, which seemed to place its hoofs upon those heads.

      "It can't be helped," he said to himself in an ecstasy of

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      submission. "One must act like that." So much the worse for those who could not, they fell under the hoofs. Had the Göppels, father and daughter, any claims upon him? Agnes was of age and he had not given her a child. What then? "I should be a fool if I did anything to my own disadvantage which I cannot be compelled to do. I can get nothing for nothing." Diederich was proud and glad of his excellent training. The students' corps, his military service and the atmosphere of imperialism, had educated him and made him fit. He resolved to give effect to his well-earned principles at home in Netzig, and to become a pioneer of the spirit of the times. In order to show an outward and visible sign of this resolution on his person he betook himself the following morning to the court hairdresser, Haby, in Mittelstrasse, and had a change made which he had more and more frequently noticed of late in officers and gentlemen of rank. Hitherto it had seemed to him too distinguished to be imitated. By means of a special apparatus he had the ends of his moustache turned up at right angles. When this was done he could hardly recognise himself in the glass. When no longer concealed by hair, his mouth had something tigerish and threatening about it, especially when his lips were drawn, and the points of his moustache aimed straight at his eyes, which inspired fear in Diederich himself, as though they flashed from the countenance of the All-Powerful.