Reimers smiled a little half-heartedly. The good progress he was making gave him no joy. He no longer prosecuted his studies with the inspired devotion that had formerly possessed him; and only the strong feeling of duty, which had become habitual with him, spurred him on to further efforts. He often said to himself: "After all, what is the good of it?" There was no sign of any obstacle in his path; despite all that had happened he was in a very fair way to achieve a distinguished military career. But he could not rid himself of an oppressive feeling that all his labour was in vain. And then again after a moment of hopeless depression he would be possessed anew by the old fair vision, his enthusiasm for the wonderful German army, to belong to which had been his pride and his salvation. With eyes full of rapture he pored over the pages of the military history, and for the thousandth time followed the army on its path of conquest. Then suddenly he checked himself. Was the army of to-day, of which he was a member, really that old victorious army? Güntz had handed over to him the justification for his resignation which he had written out before the duel with Landsberg. It had been unnecessary to add or to erase anything. Reimers had often in old days wished to have his friend's opinions in black and white before him, in order to overthrow them singly, point by point, brilliantly to overthrow them. He now held in his hand Güntz's views, succinctly and definitely expressed; but whither had flown his former keen spirit? He could no longer summon up the old impetuous dash with which he had meant to fall upon his opponent's arguments one after another, raze them to the ground and trample them underfoot like the entrenchments and fortifications in some mock combat. He compared Güntz's statement with the notes he had taken of his conversations with Falkenhein, during the short period of his adjutancy. There was much in which they agreed, and this agreement staggered him. Here were two men of fundamentally different nature whose judgment concurred; both of them were distinguished by clarity of perception and exhaustive knowledge of the circumstances with which they were dealing, and both were entitled to their opinions by a past record that excluded all idea of bias. Were they both right, then? The one with his vague uneasiness, the other with his heavy disquietude? Reimers could not dismiss the doubts of these two men. At most he might reply to Güntz that this unsatisfactory state of affairs was not so widespread as his friend asserted. This inclination to outward show was a universal sign of the times, and was not confined to Germany. In France a cavalry charge had been made upon the grand stand where the President was seated beside the Tsar. Was that not more theatrical than some of the impossible evolutions undertaken in the German man[oe]uvres?