"
Patke was too modest to avail himself of this friendly offer.
Wilhelm dragged Schrotter out of the office as fast as he could, and
even outside they still heard the magistrate's grunts of wrath.
Dark days followed, in which Schrotter seemed to live over again the
worst horns of the "wild year." A moral pestilence--the craze for
denunciation--spread itself over the whole of Germany, sparing
neither the palace nor the hut. No one was safe, either in the bosom
of the family, at the club table, in the lecture room, or in the
street, from the low spy who, from fanaticism or stupidity, from
personal spite or desire to make himself conspicuous, took hold of
some hasty or imprudent word, turned it round, mangled it, and
brought it redhot to the magistrates, who seldom had the courage to
kick the informer downstairs. Such unspeakable depths of human
baseness came to light, so full of corruption and pestilence, that
the eye turned in horror from the incredible spectacle. The
newspapers brought daily reports of denunciations for "lese
majeste," and when Schrotter read them he clasped his hands in
horrified dismay and exclaimed, "Are we in Germany? are these my
fellow-countrymen?" He became at last so disgusted that he gave up
reading the German papers, and derived his knowledge of what was
going on in the world from the two London papers which, from the
habit of a quarter of a century, he still took in.
Pages:
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308