On Monday, the 20th, we were sent to school, but it was closed, and we
took advantage of the circumstance to get into the heart of the city.
The appearance of the town-hall peppered with balls I have never
forgotten. Most of the barricades were cleared away; instead, there were
singular inscriptions in chalk on the doors of various public buildings.

At the beginning of Leipzigstrasse, at the main entrance of the Ministry
of War, we read the words, "National Property." Elsewhere, and
particularly at the palace of the Prince of Prussia, was "Property of the
Citizens" or "Property of the entire Nation."

An excited throng had gathered in front of the plain and simple palace to
whose high ground-floor windows troops of loyal and grateful Germans have
often looked up with love and admiration to see the beloved countenance
of the grey-haired imperial hero. That day we stood among the crowd and
listened to the speech of a student, who addressed us from the great
balcony amid a storm of applause. Whether it was the same honest fellow
who besought the people to desist from their design of burning the
prince's palace because the library would be imperilled, I do not know,
bat the answer, "Leave the poor boys their books," is authentic.

And it is also true, unhappily, that it was difficult to save from
destruction the house of the man whose Hohenzollern blood asserted itself
justly against the weakness of his royal brother. Through those days of
terror he was what he always had been and would remain, an upright man
and soldier, in the highest and noblest meaning of the words.

What we saw and heard in the palace and its courts, swarming with
citizens and students, was so low and revolting that I dislike to think
of it.