BOOK ONE: YESTERDAY pretation, was his uncle [oachim's opinion. Berthold regarded his mother's brother, joachim Ranzow, with reverence and affection. Government Director Ranzow, tall, slender, and elegant, precise in speech and character, had won the boy's heart by treating him as an adult. What Uncle joachim had to say on the problem of Arminius the German was romantic. Berthold did not quite understand it, but it made an impres- sion on hirn. "You know, my boy," said Uncle Ranzow, care- fully pouring him out a strong schnaps with his long hand, "the fact that the affair ended badly doesn't prove anything. "One man may ask: 'Is this thing safe?' The second: 'Is it right?' Their queries show us in one phrase Which free man is, which wight," Arminius was right. It was only by means of revolt, even at the risk of defeat, that the Germans came to understand their own natures, crystallized themselves, learned to live. If they had not revolted in those days, they would never havc entered history, they would have had no history and would have van- ished into obscurity. It was only through Arminius that they won a name and arrived. Name, reputation, is all that counts. What sort of a man the real Czsar was, is without interest: wh at lives is the legendary Czsar. If Berthold understood that correctly, it was not alone a true likeness of Arrninius that was important. The face of the statue in the Teutoburg Forest might also have apart to play. It was therefore not enough for hirn to have an idea, now, how Arminius looked. That was confusing. He was still far from his goal. A chance conversation with his cousin Ruth Oppermann did not help to sirnplify matters. Ruth patronized hirn, treated him as a small boy who had grown up with misguided ideas. WeIl, he was young, it was necessary to free hirn from his

66 THE OPPERoM A NNS prejudices, to make the truth clear to him. It was such a simple truth, too. She did her very best to rescue him, Whenever Berthold saw that plain girl with her high-strung manner, he got annoyed. But in spite of that, he was always looking for fresh opportunities to quarrel with her. It was true that she was weak in logic; but her aims harrnonized with her, she was a personality, she was sound. To Ruth Oppermann, Arminius's procedure was the only possible one. He did what a few centuries before the Macca- bees had done, he rose against the oppressors and drove them out of the country. What else could one do with oppressors? As she stood there, the great eyes flashing in her olive-tan face, her hair a bit dishevelled, as usual, Berthold was re- minded of the Germanie wornen who went into battle with their husbands, to defend their wagon-camp. They were fair- haired, those German wornen, of course, their skin was white, their eyes were blue. But their hair, too, must have been di.. shevelled, their eyes big and wild, their whole expression probably identical. His cousin Ruth was right, U ncle Joachim was right. He hirnself, Berthold, admired Arminius. The only confusing thing was that, unfortunately, Uncle Jaques, too, was right, that, in the end, nothing whatever had corne of the victory of Arrninius. 11 I n any case the enemy, Senior Master Vogelsang, behaved himself, in the weeks that preceded Berthold's lecture, in a perfectly unexceptionable manner. Bernd Vogelsang did not want to be in too much of a hurry about anything. The Queen Louise School was dangerous ground, it was necessary to ad-