its miserable limitations; which would have superstitiously censured every one who was not wholly identified with it? You are filled with horror rather than hate when confronted by a lack of red-blooded patriotism! But the men without a country are on your tracks. Do you see them there in the ballroom?"
Diederich turned round so suddenly that he spilled his champagne. Had Napoleon Fischer and his comrades forced their way in? … Buck laughed inwardly. "Don't get excited, I mean merely the silent folk on the walls. Why do they look so gay? What gives them the right to flowered paths, light footsteps and harmony? Ah, you friendly ones!" Over the heads of the dancers Buck motioned with his glass. "You friends of humanity, and of every future good, your capacious hearts did not know the sordid selfishness of a national family party. You citizens of the world, return! Even amongst us there are still some who wait for you!"
He emptied his glass and Diederich noticed with contempt that he was weeping. Then he looked very sly. "You, my contemporaries, do not know, I am sure, what sort of a sash the old Mayor is wearing, as he smiles there in the midst of officials and shepherdesses. The colours have faded, and you doubtless think they are yours? But it is the French tricolour. Then the colours were new, and they did not belong to any country, but heralded the universal dawn. To wear them was the best badge of opinion. It was, as you would say, most correct. Prosit!"
Diederich had surreptitiously drawn away his chair and was looking about to see if any one was listening. "You're drunk," he murmured, and in order to save the situation he shouted: "Herr Rose, another bottle!" Thereupon he drew up his chair again and looked most proper.
"You seem to forget that we have had a Bismarck since then!"
"Not only one," said Buck. "On all sides Europe is being
