Fritz and Eric | Page 9

firstborn! and must I lose thee too?" exclaimed
Madame Dort, when Fritz made her acquainted with the news of his
summons to headquarters. "Truly Providence sees fit to afflict me for
my sins, to try me with this fresh calamity!"
"Pray do not take such a sombre view of my departure, dear mother,"
said Fritz. "Why, probably, in a month's time I will be back again in old
Lubeck; for, I'm sure, we'll double up the French in a twinkling."
"Ah, my child, you do not know what a campaign is, yet! The matter
will not be settled so easily as you think. War is a terrible thing, and
the Prussians may not be able to crush the whole power of the French
nation in the same way in which they conquered Austria and Saxony,
and subdued our own little state four years ago."
"But, mother recollect, that now we shall be fighting all together for the
Fatherland," said Fritz, who like most young Germans was well read in
his country's history, and to him the remembrance of the old war time,
when Buonaparte trampled over central Europe, was as fresh as if it

were only yesterday. "We've long been waiting for this day, and it has
come at last! Besides, dear mutterchen, you forget that the Landwehr,
to which I belong, will only act as a reserve, and will not probably take
any part in the fighting--worse luck!" He added the latter words under
his breath, for it was not so long since he had abandoned his
barrack-room life for him to have lost the soldierly instincts there
implanted into him; and, truth to say, he longed for the strife, the
summons to arms making him "sniff the battle from afar like a young
war-horse!" The French declaration of war and the proclamation of
the German emperor had roused the people throughout the country into
a state of patriotic frenzy; so that, from the North Sea to the Danube,
from the Rhine to the Niemen, the summons to meet the ancient foe was
responded to with an alacrity and devotion which none who witnessed
the stirring scenes of that period can ever forget.
Fritz was no less eager than his comrades; and, considerably within
the interval allowed him for preparation, he and the others of his corps
living in the same vicinity were on their way to Hanover.
This second parting with another of her children almost wrung poor
Madame Dort's heart in twain; but, like the majority of German
mothers at the time, she sent off her son, with a blessing, "to fight for
his country, his Fatherland"; for, noble and peasant alike, every wife
and mother throughout the length and breadth of the land seemed to be
infected with the patriotism of a Roman matron. Madame Dort would
be second to none.
"Good-bye, my son," she said, "be brave, although I need hardly tell
your father's son that, and do your duty to God and your country!"
"I will, mother; I will," said Fritz, giving her a last kiss, as the train
rolled away with him out of the station to the martial strains of "Der
Deutsche Vaterland," which a band was playing on the platform in
honour of the young recruits going to the war.
The widow had to-day no son left to support her steps homeward to the
desolate house in the Gulden Strasse, now bereaved of her twin hopes,
Fritz and Eric both; only old Lorischen was by her side, and she felt

sadly alone.
"Both gone, both gone!" she murmured to herself as she ascended the
outside stairway that led to her apartments in the upper part of the
house. "It will be soon time for me to go, too!"
"Ach nein, dear mistress," said the faithful servant and friend who was
now the sole companion left to share the deserted home. "What would
become of me in that case, eh? We will wait and watch for the truants
in patience and hope. They'll come back to us again in God's good time;
and they will be all the more precious to us by their being taken from
us now. Himmel! mistress, why we've lots of things to do to get ready
for their return!"
CHAPTER THREE.
GRAVELOTTE.
The actual declaration of war by France against Germany was not made
until the 15th of July, 1870, reaching Berlin some four days later; but,
for some weeks prior to that date, there is not the slightest doubt that
both sides were busily engaged in mobilising their respective armies
and making extensive preparations for a struggle that promised at the
outset to be "a war to the knife"--the cut-and-dried official
announcement of hostilities only precipitating the crisis and bringing
matters to a head, so to speak.
On