Enthusiasm is the bread of youth. Youth loves the impossible, and will accept life only through a passion which colours it with iridescent hues, invests it with a halo, and endows it with heroic lineaments. This meal was one of those moments of transfiguration when the world seems malleable and impregnated with divine fire. Our minds were filled with a vision, the vision of a new classic age, as harmonious as the age of Pericles in Greece or as the third Christian century, but vaster, richer, more humane, sparkling with youth—an age which was to integrate and beautify the conquests and discoveries, still uncoordinated, of the last three hundred years. German and French, in this dream, came to an understanding. It is true that he considered that his nation, turning back to the tradition of Weimar, was to be the master-craftsman, whereas I contended that France had never ceased to occupy that role, which was her vocation and fulfilled her nature. But this difficulty seemed trifling. We were not so much antagonists as friendly rivals. Is this man, I asked myself when he had gone, is this man typical of young and literate Germany? In the classic land of militarism, is it only the old who are swashbucklers? A few weeks later, in early spring, on one of those afternoons in which showers alternate with sunshine, and in which the buds, swelling with sap, open, I was walking in the beech forest to the south of Munich. My companion, about thirty years of age, was in fine fettle. Tall and thick-set, florid of face, hair blond and bristly, he walked like a conqueror, and seemed in his element among these sturdy trees. The man of the woods personified! I considered that this professor, already renowned, ought rightly in appearance to be rough-hewn, massive, dynamic, like a woodman at work. He was a hearty eater and a vigorous drinker, ruddy with health, absolutely innocent of the scepticism of drawing-rooms. I had several times before had the chance of admiring this man who reminded me of one of our Normandy horses. Above all, I had seen him at the Hofbrauerie in Munich, where we had washed down our political discussions with copious draughts of that dark beer, whose consumption in Bavaria is encouraged by old King Louis, chief brewer, and owner of the wealthiest tavern in the empire. A country walk frequently encourages avowals which would never have been made during a thousand meetings in town, among sophisticated men. My companion had just confessed to me that he belonged to the “Social Democracy.” As yet in secret only, for it is not permissible in Germany to wear openly and simultaneously the livery of the professor and that of the socialist. But the socialist party, suffering from a dearth of intellectuals, desired him to become a deputy. At the first opportunity, he would exchange his professorial chair for a seat in the Reichstag. The ambition to revive Bebel in his own person, to become a new Wilhelm Liebknecht, made his nostrils dilate.