Reimers smiled. There is an old wives' superstition that where a screech-owl cries there will soon be a corpse. This time the old women would be right. He rested his head in his hands and reflected. Before him passed with bewildering rapidity many recollections and impressions from his life's history: vague boyish impulses; enthusiasms of youth; exalted strivings and ambitions of manhood; the disenchantments and doubts of these latter days. It was as though he had been already lifted into a clearer light, above all the errors of earthly experience. The restless ineffectual arguing to and fro with which he had tormented himself the day before was absent from this calmer mood. What was the use of struggling against inexorable necessity? Certainly war was one of the most terrible evils to which the world had ever been subjected, and he who should deliver mankind from this curse would be a new Saviour. But when would the Messiah come? Till then one must have patience. The nations groaned under the weight of their armaments; but none would set the example of throwing off the oppressive burden. And the German people, who seemed to furnish an object-lesson in the world's history, whose destiny had been fuller than any other of changes and contradictions--the German people, at once so large-minded and so petty, so admirable and so despicable, so strong and so weak; who had done so much for the advancement of culture, and yet were so unconscious of their great work; hated by the rest of the world, yet divided amongst themselves--the German people had least call of all to make a beginning. They must, like every other nation, look to a strong army as their safeguard. But then came the crushing thought: that army was no longer the same that had in one famous struggle forced the whole world to unwilling admiration. Reimers took a mournful farewell of the beloved heroes of that mighty epoch. Every name connected with it thrilled his memory: Saarbrücken, a skirmish still scarcely imbued with the gravity of war, and assuming rather the character of playful bantering provocation; Weissenburgh and Wörth, where Bavarians and North Germans met as comrades in arms; Spicheren, where a slight encounter with the rear-guard grew into a serious conflict; Metz, which cost the enemy one of his two armies in the field, and was the cause of weeping to countless German mothers; Beaumont, the prelude to the huge tragedy of Sedan; and lastly, Paris, and the grim tussle of the seasoned fighters with the young enthusiasm of the republican army of relief at Orleans, Beaune la Rolande, Le Mans, St. Quentin, and on the Lisaine. He saw the army returning from the campaign crowned with victory; and then began that steady persevering activity which, not content to rest on its laurels, proceeded with the work of strengthening and protecting what had been won. Then he thought of the present, and, still more gravely, of the future.