Explore "Regina" by Hermann Sudermann on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Peace was signed, and the world, which for so long had been the great / Corsican's plaything, came to itself again. It came to itself, bruised / and mangled, bleeding from a thousand wounds, and studded with / battle-fields like a body with festering sores. Yet, in the rebound / from bondage to freedom, men did not realise that there was anything / very pitiable in their condition. The ground from which their wheat / sprang, they reflected, would bear all the richer fruit from being / soaked in blood, and if bullets and bayonets had thinned their ranks, / there was now more elbow-room for those who were left.
The yawning vacuums in the seething human caldron gave a man space to / breathe in. One great chorus of rejoicing from the Rock of Gibraltar to / the North Cape ascended heavenwards. Bells in every steeple were set in / motion, and from every altar and from every humble hearth arose prayers / of thanksgiving. Mourners hid their diminished heads, for the burst of / victorious song drowned their lamentations, and the earth absorbed / their tears as indifferently as it had sucked in the blood of their / fallen.