tion, marching slowly in small sections. When they reached Unter den Linden they hesitated, as if lost, took counsel by an exchange of glances, and turned off towards the Castle. There they stood in silence, their hands in their pockets, while the wheels of the cars splashed them with mud, and they hunched up their shoulders beneath the rain which fell on their faded overcoats. Many of them turned to look at passing officers, at the ladies in their carriages, at the long fur coats of the gentlemen hurrying from Burgstrasse. Their faces were expressionless, neither threatening nor even curious: not as if they wanted to see, but as if they wanted to be seen. Others never moved an eye from the windows of the Castle. The rain trickled down from their upturned faces. The horse of a shouting policeman drove them on further across the street to the next corner—but they stood still again, and the world seemed to sink down between those broad hollow faces, lit by the livid gleam of evening, and the stern walls beyond them which were already enveloped in darkness.
"I do not understand," said Diederich, "why the police do not take more energetic measures. That is certainly a rebellious crew."
"Don't you worry," Wiebel replied, "they have received exact instructions. Believe me, the authorities have their own well-developed plans. It is not always desirable to suppress at the outset such excrescences on the body politic. When they have been allowed to ripen, then a radical operation can be performed."
The ripening process to which Wiebel referred increased daily, and on the 26th it was completed. The demonstrations of the unemployed seemed more conscious of their objective. When they were driven back into one of the northern streets they overflowed into the next, and, before they could be cut off, they surged forward again in increased numbers. The processions all met at Unter den Linden, and as often as they
