This free-will
offering only comes, however, by aid of the sharpest threatening of
punishment. I have known fourteen-year-old widows who offered
themselves miserably to be burned. If they had known how soon they
would be consoled, and new love sprang up, they would have violently
resisted such suicide! Bhani there is a living example of this,"
As she heard her name she looked up, and Wilhelm intercepted a look
between her and Dr. Schrotter, which all at once made clear to him
what he had vaguely suspected before. He turned his head sadly
toward the window, and looked out into the foggy autumn evening. He
felt almost as if he had committed a crime, in having discovered a
secret which had not been freely revealed to him.
CHAPTER V.
A LAY SERMON.
"Es ist eine Lust, in deiser Zeit zu leben!" cried Paul Habor, as he
walked with Wilhelm and Dr. Schrotter on the first sunny day the
following April. They walked under the lindens full of leaf through
the Thiergarten, and home over the Charlottenburger Brucke.
The spirit in which he uttered Hutten's words was at that time
dominant and far-reaching. It seemed as though people were all
enjoying the honeymoon of the new empire; that they breathed peace
and the joy of life with the air, as if the whole nation inhaled the
pleasure of living, the joy of youth and brave deeds, and that they
stood at the entrance of an incomprehensibly great era, promising to
everyone fabulous heights of happiness.
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