The curtain went up for the last act. The audience was stricken with sudden paralyzed amazement. On the stage, actors, scene-shifters, the whole theatre staff, were grouped in an immense semicircle. In the chord of the semicircle, one figure stood alone, grimly dominant. At first, it was taken for a daringly realistic caricature of the Emperor; and fear of the penalties of lèse-majesté dawned in the minds of the beholders. But the figure spoke, and doubt fled. It _was_ the Emperor. Everyone knew that vigorous vocative "Germans!" The said Germans were used to manifestations of their ruler's omniscience and omnipresence; and they automatically stood to listen. He quoted the assertion of Herr Bebmarck in the Reichstag, that every speech by the Kaiser against Socialists meant a socialist gain of 100,000 votes at the elections. Then he flung out a challenge. He said that the insuing elections meant war to the knife, not between him and his people but, between him and the handful of venal demagogues unworthy to bear the sacred name of Germans who led his people astray. He opened his portfolio. Socialism, he said, commanded four million votes. One-third of the German Army was Socialist. Socialism was the largest political party in the Empire; and increased each year at the expense of every other party. It was a vast and important body. A body needed a brain to direct its functions. Who, after all, was the head? The demagogues, or the Kaiser? At a moment like the present, when the Fatherland was menaced on both sides by anarchy and hereditary enemies, the glorious German nation must not be harassed by intestine feuds. Hitherto, a great part of his people had been taught to obstruct his schemes for German welfare. Thereby they had hurt themselves. They had had the pleasure of opposing him: but they had delayed their own betterment: for his alone was the will which should rule Germany. Yet, he would not blame his people. They had been betrayed by liars, deceived by treacherous pseudophilanthropists. He would not blame the tempted, but the tempters. The names of the tempters, the human Satans, were August Bebmarck, turner: Grillerbergen, locksmith: Raue, Bulermolken, Reistem, saddlers: Varmol, ex-post-official: Steinbern, lawyer: Volkenberg, territorial-magnate: Singenmann, capitalist. He arraigned these men on a charge of having deluded the good heart of four million German people by professions of disinterestedness, of benevolence, by promises of universal betterment. He denounced their professions and their promises as false, and their practices as corrupt enough to have obtained the attention of the police. The socialist demagogues were traitors to the very cause which they professed to serve. Their object was not the improvement of the social conditions of the people: it was personal aggrandisement. He brought proofs from his portfolio. Bebmarck, Grillenberger, Varmol had accepted bribes of M. 100,000, M. 45,000, M.