"This will inform you better than I can, sir," he said; "it is the last issue of my paper published an hour before your entry here. This is what I wrote in it: "'The history of the days which are to come is written at the point of the bayonet. It is not for the citizens of Frankfort to change anything. For the population of a small and weak state there is nothing else to do but to succour the combatants, whether friends or enemies: they must dress wounds, nurse the sick, exercise charity towards all. Right behaviour is as much the duty of every one as obedience towards the responsible authority.'" Then, seeing the general shrugging his shoulders, Fischer in his turn took a step forward and holding out his paper: "Read yourself, if you doubt me," said he. The general tore it from his hands. "You wrote that yesterday," he said white with rage, "because yesterday you felt us coming, because, yesterday, you were afraid of us." And tearing up the newspaper he crushed it into a ball and threw it in the Councillor's face, shouting; "You are a coward." Fischer threw a wild glance around him as if for a weapon with which to avenge this insult; then with his hand to his forehead he staggered, turned round with a strangled cry and fell in a heap, killed by the bursting of a blood vessel in the brain. The general went to him, pushed him with his foot, and seeing that he was dead: "Throw this rascal into a corner," said he to his soldiers, "until his family comes to fetch him." The soldiers dragged the corpse into a corner of the ante-room. Meanwhile, Fellner, fearing that harm would befall his friend, had run to Hannibal Fischer, the journalist's father, and had told him of the general's orders. Hannibal Fischer was an old man of eighty, he went to the headquarters and asked for his son. The son had been seen going up to the first floor where General Falkenstein held his audiences, but no one had seen him leave. The old man went up and asked for the general. He had gone to lunch and his door was closed. "Sit down there," said some one, "he may return." "Cannot you tell him that it is a father who claims his son?" "What on?" asked one of the soldiers. "My son, Councillor Fischer, who was arrested this morning." "Why, it is the father," said the soldier to his comrade. "If he wants his son, let him take him," said the other. "How, take him?" said the old man, bewildered. "Certainly," answered the soldier. "There he is waiting for you." And he pointed to the corpse in the corner. The father approached the body, knelt on one knee and raised his son's head. "Then they have killed him?" he asked the soldiers. "No, indeed, he died of his own accord." The father kissed the corpse on the forehead. "These are unhappy days," he said, "in which fathers bury their children." Then he went down, called a street porter, sent him for three of his mates, mounted again to the ante-chamber and showing them the body: