CHAPTER XXVII.

A LARGE DEFICIT.

A DEFICIT of a milliard per month! A thousand million marks expenditure over income per month! That was the disagreeable message with which the Chancellor greeted the assembling of the new Parliament. The only wonder is that this could be kept secret until after the elections. But it is now high time to look into this matter, and see that some improvement is made.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS.

I FIND myself still quite solitary at. home, a thing I have never known since I was a single young man.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A STORMY PARLIAMENTARY SITTING.

I HAVE not been in the House since the debate on the savings bank question. It will be remembered that this was prior to the recent general election, and that the House, or as it was styled, the Committee of Government, was then composed exclusively of those members of the Socialist party who had sat before the Revolution, the seats of all the members of the various other parties having been declared vacant, in consideration of the fact that all such members had been returned through the influence of capital.

CHAPTER XXX.

THREATENED STRIKE.

THE Chancellor’s new proposals for getting rid of the great deficit have been received on all sides in Berlin with mockery and derision. To what lengths this dissatisfaction may yet go there is no foretelling. For a long time past there has been a great spirit of discontent amongst the artificers in metals, and more particularly amongst engineers. These men claim to have had a large share in bringing about the Revolution, and they complain that they are now shamefully cheated out of what Socialism had always promised them.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MENACING DIPLOMATIC NOTES.

THE socialistic Governments of Russia and France are quite as much at their wits’ ends as we are to know how to overcome the difficulties that are constantly arising. Hence they try to appease the ill-humours of their populations by directing attention to foreign affairs. One of the first acts of the socialistic governments had been to dissolve the Triple Alliance. Austria sees herself threatened at the present moment by Italy, in Istria and the Italian Tyrol.

CHAPTER XXXII.

GREAT STRIKE AND SIMULTANEOUS OUTBREAK OF WAR.

ALL the iron-workers in Berlin and the neighbourhood came out on strike this morning, upon the refusal of their demands to receive the full reward of their labour. The Government met the strike with a prompt order to at once stop the dinners and suppers of all those on strike. In all the State cookshops the officials have the strictest instructions not to honour the coupons of the iron-workers.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION BEGINS.

THE iron-workers on strike have no intention of being starved out. Paying a visit to my father-in-law, I discovered on the way home that a number of these men were about attempting to storm the bread magazine. Grandfather is located at the Refuge for Elderly People, into which Bellevue Castle has been turned. The bread magazine is just opposite Bellevue Castle, on the other side of the Spree, and between the river and the railway embankment.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

DISHEARTENING NEWS.

TO-DAY has been the saddest day of all my life. On going to see my wife I found that she talked incoherently and wildly, and did not recognise me. The doctor said he must convey the sad intelligence to me that the death of her child and the severe shocks of the last few months had so deeply affected her mind as to leave now no prospect of recovery. She fancies herself constantly exposed to the persecutions of all kinds of demons. It has been held advisable to send her to the Asylum for Incurables, and she is to be taken there to-day.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE LAST CHAPTER.

To Mr. Franz Schmidt, New York.

“MY DEAR FRANZ,—Be a man, and prepare yourself to bear with fortitude the sad news this letter conveys. Our dear father is no longer amongst the living. Like many other innocent victims, he has fallen a sacrifice to the great rising which has raged for the last few days in Berlin.

POSTSCRIPT.

“IF it be true that ‘good wine needs no bush,’ it is true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better for the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in behalf of a good play.”