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The Story of My Life — Volume 03 by Georg Ebers
page 10 of 45 (22%)
emblems of guilds, and trade symbols. Mounted standard bearers,
gentlemen in robes--the professors of the university--and students in
holiday attire, mingled in the motley yet solemn train.

How many tears were shed over those coffins which contained the earthly
remains of many a young life once rich in hopes and glowing with warm
enthusiasm, many a quiet heart which had throbbed joyously for man's
noblest possession! The interment in the Friedrichshain, where four
hundred singers raised their voices, and a band of music composed of the
hautboy players of many regiments poured mighty volumes of sound over the
open graves of the dead, must have been alike dignified and majestic.

But the opposition between the contending parties was still too great,
and the demand upon the king to salute the dead had aroused such anger in
my mother's circle, that she kept aloof from these magnificent and in
themselves perfectly justifiable funeral obsequies. It seemed almost
unendurable that the king had constrained himself to stand on the balcony
of the palace with his head bared, holding his helmet in his hand, while
the procession passed.

The effect of this act upon the loyal citizens of Berlin can scarcely be
described. I have seen men--even our humble Kurschner--weep during the
account of it by eye-witnesses.

Whoever knew Frederick William IV. also knew that neither genuine
reconciliation nor respect for the fallen champions of liberty induced
him to show this outward token of respect, which was to him the deepest
humiliation.

The insincerity of the sovereign's agreement with the ideas, events, and
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