"
"Then I have no doubt that you will consider that I did commit a
crime."
"Ah! so there was something after all?"
"Yes, I contributed fifteen hundred marks to a collection for the
distressed families of the Social Democrats who had been dismissed
from Berlin."
"You did?" cried Paul, dropping his knife and fork, and staring at
Wilhelm in amazement.
"And that seems so criminal to you?"
"Look here, Wilhelm, you know I'm awfully fond of you, but I must
say you have only got what you deserve. How could you take part in a
revolutionary demonstration of the kind?"
"I did not, nor do I now see anything political in it. It was a
question of women and children deprived of their bread-winners, and
whom one cannot allow to starve or freeze to death."
"Oh, go along with your Progressionist phrases! Nobody need starve
or freeze in Berlin. The really poor are thoroughly well looked
after by the proper authorities. The supposed distress of these
women and children is a mere trumped-up story on the part of the
Revolutionists--a means of agitation, a weapon against the
government. The beggars simply speculate on the tears of sentimental
idiots. They get up a sort of penny-dreadful, whereon the one side
you have a picture of injured innocence in the shape of pale
despairing mothers and clamoring children, and on the other,
villainy triumphant in the form of a police constable or a
government official.
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