On the first of May of the following year, which happened to fall on a
Sunday, a long procession of carriages drove along the road from
Harburg to Friesenmoor. They stopped at the entrance to the estate.
Before them rose a triumphal arch composed of branches of fir garlanded
with flowers, and adorned with flags and ribbons, and a gold
inscription on a blue ground, which ran as follows:
"A gracious Sovereign's due Reward
To fruitful Labour, honest Work."
A "Verein" with its banner was posted beside the arch. There was a roar
of cannon, the banner waved, the Verein gave three "Hochs!" and its
chief, or spokesman, stepped up to the first carriage, in which sat a
youngish gentleman with spectacles, and an officer in the gorgeous
uniform of a Landwehr dragoon, his breast covered with stars and
crosses. The spectacled gentleman was the Landrath of the circuit, and
the cavalry officer was no other than Paul Haber, now Herr Paul von
Haber. For he had been raised to the nobility, and celebrated his
auspicious event to-day in the midst of his retainers and a host of
invited guests, whom he had fetched in a dozen carriages from the
station at Harburg, supported by his distinguished young pupils.
The spokesman of the Verein, a man of some fifty years of age, with a
grizzled beard, addressed the proprietor in a glowing speech, in which,
among other things, he assured him--the man of thirty-seven--that "We
all look upon you as our father, and honor and love you as if we were
your children." Paul smiled, and returned thanks in a few warm words,
then renewed "Hochs!" more waving of banners and firing of cannon, and
the procession set itself in motion again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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