The Story of My Life — Volume 03 by Georg Ebers
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page 10 of 45 (22%)
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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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