"I have again to-day felt a profound desire to quit this world and enter a higher world;but this desire is rather dejection than strength,a lassitude than an upsoaring."The year 1816was spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his young comrades,in this ceaseless self-examination,and in the perpetual battle which he waged with the desire for death that pursued him;every day he had deeper doubts of himself;and on the 1st of January,1817,he wrote this prayer in his diary :--"Grant to me,O Lord,to me whom Thou halt endowed,in sending me on earth,with free will,the grace that in this year which we are now beginning I may never relax this constant attention,and not shamefully give up the examination of my conscience which I have hitherto made.Give me strength to increase the attention which Iturn upon my own life,and to diminish that which I turn upon the life of others;strengthen my will that it may become powerful to command the desires of the body and the waverings of the soul;give me a pious conscience entirely devoted to Thy celestial kingdom,that I may always belong to Thee,or after failing,may be able to return to Thee."Sand was right in praying to God for the year 1817,and his fears were a presentiment:the skies of Germany,lightened by Leipzig and Waterloo,were once more darkened;to the colossal and universal despotism of Napoleon succeeded the individual oppression of those little princes who made up the Germanic Diet,and all that the nations had gained by overthrowing the giant was to be governed by dwarfs.This was the time when secret societies were organised throughout Germany;let us say a few words about them,for the history that we are writing is not only that of individuals,but also that of nations,and every time that occasion presents itself we will give our little picture a wide horizon.
The secret societies of Germany,of which,without knowing them,we have all heard,seem,when we follow them up,like rivers,to originate in some sort of affiliation to those famous clubs of the 'i1lumines'and the freemasons which made so much stir in France at the close of the eighteenth century.At the time of the revolution of '89these different philosophical,political,and religious sects enthusiastically accepted the republican doctrines,and the successes of our first generals have often been attributed to the secret efforts of the members.When Bonaparte,who was acquainted with these groups,and was even said to have belonged to them,exchanged his general's uniform for an emperor's cloak,all of them,considering him as a renegade and traitor,not only rose against him at home,but tried to raise enemies against him abroad;as they addressed themselves to noble and generous passions,they found a response,and princes to whom their results might be profitable seemed for a moment to encourage them.Among others,Prince Louis of Prussia was grandmaster of one of these societies.
The attempted murder by Stops,to which we have already referred,was one of the thunderclaps of the storm;but its morrow brought the peace of Vienna,and the degradation of Austria was the death-blow of the old Germanic organisation.These societies,which had received a mortal wound in 1806and were now controlled by the French police,instead of continuing to meet in public,were forced to seek new members in the dark.In 1811several agents of these societies were arrested in Berlin,but the Prussian authorities,following secret orders of (Queen Louisa,actually protected them,so that they were easily able to deceive the French police about their intentions.
About February 1815the disasters of the French army revived the courage of these societies,for it was seen that God was helping their cause:the students in particular joined enthusiastically in the new attempts that were now begun;many colleges enrolled themselves almost entire,anal chose their principals and professors as captains;the poet,Korner,killed on the 18th of October at Liegzig,was the hero of this campaign.
The triumph of this national movement,which twice carried the Prussian army--largely composed of volunteers--to Paris,was followed,when the treaties of 1815and the new Germanic constitution were made known,by a terrible reaction in Germany.All these young men who,exiled by their princes,had risen in the name of liberty,soon perceived that they had been used as tools to establish European despotism;they wished to claim the promises that had been made,but the policy of Talleyrand and Metternich weighed on them,and repressing them at the first words they uttered,compelled them to shelter their discontent and their hopes in the universities,which,enjoying a kind of constitution of their own,more easily escaped the investigations made by the spies of the Holy Alliance;but,repressed as they were,these societies continued nevertheless to exist,and kept up communications by means of travelling students,who,bearing verbal messages,traversed Germany under the pretence of botanising,and,passing from mountain to mountain,sowed broadcast those luminous and hopeful words of which peoples are always greedy and kings always fear.