Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books Transcriber's Note: 1. Page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=PWUTAAAAYAAJ&dq Regina or The Sins of the Fathers REGINA OR THE SINS OF THE FATHERS BY HERMANN SUDERMANN _TRANSLATED BY_ _BEATRICE MARSHALL_ LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVII COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY John Lane. * * * COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY John Lane Company. REGINA OR THE SINS OF THE FATHERS CHAPTER I Peace was signed, and the world, which for so long had been the great Corsican's plaything, came to itself again. It came to itself, bruised and mangled, bleeding from a thousand wounds, and studded with battle-fields like a body with festering sores. Yet, in the rebound from bondage to freedom, men did not realise that there was anything very pitiable in their condition. The ground from which their wheat sprang, they reflected, would bear all the richer fruit from being soaked in blood, and if bullets and bayonets had thinned their ranks, there was now more elbow-room for those who were left. The yawning vacuums in the seething human caldron gave a man space to breathe in. One great chorus of rejoicing from the Rock of Gibraltar to the North Cape ascended heavenwards. Bells in every steeple were set in motion, and from every altar and from every humble hearth arose prayers of thanksgiving. Mourners hid their diminished heads, for the burst of victorious song drowned their lamentations, and the earth absorbed their tears as indifferently as it had sucked in the blood of their fallen.