We have seen the last of him! Conrad, I'm one of the party!
Hallelujah! I hear countless angels blowing on their trumpets! I'll stay with the _Union_!
About that I am no longer the one to decide. For I have still a confession to make to you. I, too, am not the real owner of the newspaper.
You are not? Now, by all the gods, I am at my wit's end. I'm beginning not to care who this owner is. Be he man, will-of-the-wisp, or the devil Beelzebub in person, I bid him defiance.
He is a kind of a will-of-the-wisp, a little something of a devil, and from top to toe a great rogue. For, Conrad, my friend, beloved of my youth, it is you yourself.
"Ceded to Conrad Bolz"--correct! So that would be a sort of gift. Can't be accepted, much too little!
[_Throws the paper aside_.] Prudence be gone!
Here I kneel, Adelaide! What I am saying I don't know in my joy, for the whole room is dancing round with me. If you will take me for your husband, you will do me the greatest favor in the world. If you don't want me, box my ears and send me off!
I do want you! (_Kissing him_.) This was the cheek!
[_Kisses her; they remain in an embrace; short pause_.]
Colonel, it takes place under editorial sanction.
ADELAIDE (_stretching out her hand to the_ COLONEL).
Dear friend, I'm betrothed to a journalist!
[_As_ IDA _and_ OLDENDORF _from either side hasten to the pair, the curtain falls_]
[Footnote 1: Permission S. Hirzel, Leipzig.]
TRANSLATED BY E.H. BABBITT, A.B. Assistant Professor of German, Tufts College.
Some well-meaning men still wish that the defects of their old church had not led to so great a revolt, and even liberal Roman Catholics still fail to see in Luther and Zwingli anything but zealous heretics whose wrath brought about a schism. May such views vanish from Germany! All religious denominations have reason to attribute to Luther whatever in their present faith is genuine and sincere, and has a wholesome and sustaining influence. The heretic of Wittenberg is fully as much the reformer of the German Catholics as of the Protestants. This is true not only because the teachers of the Catholic Church in their struggle against him outgrew the old scholasticism, and fought for their sacraments with new weapons gained from his language, his culture, and his moral worth; nor because he, in effect, destroyed the church of the Middle Ages and forced his opponents at Trent to raise a firmer structure, though seemingly within the old forms and proportions; but still more because he expressed the common basis of all German denominations, of our spiritual courage, piety, and honesty, with such force that a good deal of his own nature, to the present benefit of every German, has survived in our doctrines and language, in our civil laws and morals, in the thoughtfulness of our people, and in our science and literature. Some of the ideas for which Luther's stubborn and contentious spirit fought, against both Catholics and Calvinists, are abandoned by the free investigation of modern times. His intensely passionate beliefs, gained in the heartrending struggles of a devout soul, occasionally missed an important truth. Sometimes he was harsh, unfair, even cruel toward his opponents; but such things should no longer disturb any German, for all the limitations of his nature and training are as nothing compared with the fulness of the blessings which have flowed from his great heart into the life of our nation.