At last, towards morning, the over-taxed strength was exhausted, the thirst for blood slaked. Death was gleaning in the houses where battle had cast its mangled victims, and trembling hands were busied in binding up wounds, while compassion and horror struggled for the mastery. The last shot died away, the insurrection was quelled. Silence spread over the scene the lassitude of death. Slowly the ever-patient heavens flushed with the rosy hues of dawn, and the still reeking city lay purple in its blood. Ottmar stood at the window gazing silently, now at the glowing sky and now at the blood-stained earth. Horror had stupefied him. In the angles of the streets soldiers, who had fallen asleep while standing in the ranks, leaned against each other, shoulder to shoulder. Now and then a body covered with straw was borne past; pallid women stepped noiselessly over the barricades, urged on by the courage of despair, and crept along the streets to seek their husbands and sons; invisible angels of death floated through the air, guided them into the right path, and hovered around them when, in some lifeless body, they were forced to recognize a relative. _Heinrich_ gazed motionless at these changing scenes of misery; but his inmost heart was strangely stirred. The spirit of murdered freedom celebrated in him its resurrection, built a temple in his soul, raised its arches heavenward, and led him away from this sorrowful scene of his former unhallowed labors to his own home, where the lists stood open to the missionaries of national happiness, where he could obey the call which had appealed to his conscience in the death-cry of an ill-used country. All the frivolity and brilliancy that had formerly charmed him was swallowed up in the streams of blood he had seen flow,--all striving and struggling to assert his own merits vanished in the newly-awakened consciousness of the duties devolving upon every talented man for the development and culture of the masses. The solemnity of the moment had seized upon him and stripped off all that was false and superficial. He could not answer with sophisms the great question propounded by the times; he must at last be himself again, must acknowledge the truth, and from amidst all the horrors of vengeance, the rushing streams of blood, once more arose in its pure beauty the thought of the eternal rights of man he had so grievously profaned. XXII. LIGHT AND SHADOW.