their feudal life, their medieval beliefs, their simple monarchism, were
the incarnation of political folly; to them liberalism seemed another
form of atheism, but in this solitude and fresh air of the great plain
was reared a race of men who would always be ready, as their fathers had
been, to draw their sword and go out to conquer new provinces for their
King to govern.




CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE.

1821-1847.


Of the boy's early life we know little. His mother was ambitious for her
sons; Otto from his early years she designed for the Diplomatic Service;
she seems to have been one of those women who was willing to sacrifice
the present happiness of her children for their future advancement. When
only six years old the boy was sent away from home to a school in
Berlin. He was not happy there; he pined for the free life of the
country, the fields and woods and animals; when he saw a plough he would
burst into tears, for it reminded him of his home. The discipline of the
school was hard, not with the healthy and natural hardships of life in
the open air, but with an artificial Spartanism, for it was the time
when the Germans, who had suddenly awoke to feelings of patriotism and a
love of war to which they had long been strangers, under the influence
of a few writers, were throwing all their energies into the cultivation