"Pardon me for interrupting you," said the General; "I consider this bargaining of the Prince with those persons, parties, strata of the population, classes of society--call it what you will--as you do, Count, as of course an unfortunate policy but by no means a necessary one. Quite the contrary! The _rocher de bronze_, upon which the Prussian throne is established--a loyal nobility, a zealous officialdom, a faithful army--they were strong enough to bear the German Imperial dignity, even though it had to be a German and not a Prussian, or not an imperial dignity at all." "Yes, General, it had to be an imperial dignity, and a German one too," said Reinhold. The General shot a lowering glance from under his bushy brows at the young man; but he had just listened with satisfaction to his explanations, and he felt that he must now, even though Reinhold opposed him, let him speak. "Why do you think so?" he asked. "I only follow my own feelings," replied Reinhold; "but I am sure that they are the feelings of all who have ever lived much abroad, away from home, as I have--those who have experienced, as I have, what it means to belong to a people that is not a nation, and, because it is not a nation, is not considered complete by the other nations with which we have intercourse, nay, is even despised outright; what it means in difficult situations into which the mariner so easily comes, to be left to one's own resources, or, what is still worse, to ask for the assistance or the protection of others who unwillingly render it or prefer not to help at all. I have experienced and endured all this, as thousands and thousands of others have done, and to all this injustice and wrong have had silently to clench my fist in my pocket. And now I have been abroad again since the war, until a few weeks ago, and found that I no longer needed to dance attendance and stand aside, that I could enter with as firm step as the others; and thus, my friends, I thanked God from the bottom of my heart that we have an Emperor--a German Emperor; for nothing less than a German Emperor it had to be, if we were to demonstrate to the Englishman, the American, the Chinese and Japanese, _ad oculos_, that they henceforth no longer carry on trade and form treaties with Hamburgers, Bremers, with Oldenburgers and Mecklinburgers, or even with Prussians, but with Germans, who sail under one and the same flag--a flag which has the will and the power to protect and defend the least and the poorest who shares the honor and the fortune of being a German."