Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=PWUTAAAAYAAJ&dq
Peace was signed, and the world, which for so long had been the greatCorsican's plaything, came to itself again. It came to itself, bruisedand mangled, bleeding from a thousand wounds, and studded withbattle-fields like a body with festering sores. Yet, in the reboundfrom bondage to freedom, men did not realise that there was anythingvery pitiable in their condition. The ground from which their wheatsprang, they reflected, would bear all the richer fruit from beingsoaked in blood, and if bullets and bayonets had thinned their ranks,there was now more elbow-room for those who were left.
The yawning vacuums in the seething human caldron gave a man space tobreathe in. One great chorus of rejoicing from the Rock of Gibraltar tothe North Cape ascended heavenwards. Bells in every steeple were set inmotion, and from every altar and from every humble hearth arose prayersof thanksgiving. Mourners hid their diminished heads, for the burst ofvictorious song drowned their lamentations, and the earth absorbedtheir tears as indifferently as it had sucked in the blood of theirfallen.
In glorious May weather the Peace of Paris was concluded. Liliesbloomed once more out of lakes of blood, and from the obscurity oflumber-rooms the blood-saturated banner of the fleur de lys wasdragged forth into the light of day. The Bourbons crept from theirhiding-places, whither they had been driven by fear of Robespierre'sknife. They rubbed their eyes and forthwith began to reign. They hadforgotten nothing and learnt nothing, except a new catchword fromTalleyrand's en tout cas vocabulary, i.e. Legitimacy. The rest ofthe world was too busily engaged in wreathing laurels to crown theconquerors, and filling up bumpers to drink their health in, to pay anyattention to this farce of Bourbon government. All eyes were turned ina fever of expectancy towards the West, whence were to come theconquering heroes, the laurel-crowned warriors who had been willing tosacrifice their lives for the honour of wife and child, for justice,and for the sacred soil of their fatherland. They had been under thefire of the Corsican Demon, the oppressor whom they in their turn hadhunted and run to earth, till at last he lay in shackles at their feet.
When the victors began the homeward march, the German oaks werebursting into leaf, soon to be laughingly plundered of their younggreen foliage. On they came in swarms, first, joyous and lighthearted,the pride and flower of the Fatherland, the sons of the wealthy, who,as Volunteer Jägers, with their own horses and their own arms, had goneforth to the war of Liberation. Their prog