The Empire had fallen. A Republic,
acknowledged by the great powers of the world, was established. Would
the soldiers stack their arms and return to their homes? If the generals
or under officers attempted to restrain them it was to be remembered
that the soldiers were as a hundred thousand to one.
The women felt no real apprehension of an avenging army. They knew the
average German male. His innate subserviency to power would turn him
automatically about to the party whose power was supreme. And the
soldiers hated their officers.
VIII
On Friday night Gisela left her apartment in the Koeniginstrasse, where
she had slept for a few hours after a visit to the principal cities of
the Empire, and walked out to Schwabing, that picturesque "village" that
looked like a bit of the Alps transferred to the edge of Munich. She had
not forgotten the man she had sacrificed, and at the end of the first
day of the Revolution she had learned that his body had been caught
under the Schwabing bridge, rescued, and placed temporarily in the vault
of the little church.
It was a bright starlight night, and the old white church with its
bulbous tower, last outpost of Turkey in her heyday, looked like a lone
mourner for the dream of Mittel-Europa. Gisela climbed the mound and
entered the quiet enclosure.
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