The Youth of the Great Elector Part 15

"Poor child," he whispered, "how bitterly distressed she is! Go to her, my precious love, and pray with her for our happiness and our love."

"Are you going away already, my Frederick?" she asked tenderly.

He pointed with his finger to the tapestry door. "She is so distressed, and her dear little face was so sad, it touched me to the heart."

"How foolish I was," she murmured impatiently--"how foolish not to think of it, that the child might disturb us! She has often before spent the night with me, and never waked up, never--"

"Never has she been disturbed," concluded the Prince, smiling. "Never before have evil spirits chattered and laughed within your room, and roused her from her sleep. But she shall yet see that her prayer has not been in vain, but that it has exorcised the evil spirits. Farewell, dear one! Farewell, and this kiss for good-night--this kiss for my beloved promised bride! The last betrothal kiss, for to-morrow night you will be my wife! G.o.d and all ye holy angels on high, protect the innocent and good!"

He kissed once more her lips and her dark, perfumed hair, then hastened with rapid step across the apartment, hurriedly opened the window, lowered the rope ladder, and swung himself up on the windowsill."

"Farewell, dearest, farewell! To-morrow night we shall meet again!" he whispered, kissing the tips of his fingers to her. Then he seized the rope ladder with both hands, and ere the Princess, who had hastened toward him, had yet found time to a.s.sist him and offer her hand to aid him in descending, his slight, elastic figure had disappeared beneath the dark window frame.

Ludovicka leaned out of the window, and with all the strength of her delicate little hands held firm the rope ladder, which swayed backward and forward and sighed and groaned beneath its burden. All at once the rope ladder stood still, and like spirit greetings were wafted up to her the words, "Farewell! farewell!"

"He is gone," murmured Ludovicka, retreating from the window--"he is gone!

But to-morrow, to-morrow night, I shall have him again. To-morrow night I shall be his wife. O Sir Count d'Entragues! you shall be forced to acknowledge that the Electoral Prince loves me, and that his declaration of love is synonymous with an offer of marriage! I think I have managed everything exactly as it was marked out on the paper. Let us look again."

She again drew forth the paper from the casket on her writing table, and read it through attentively. "Yes," she murmured as she read, "all in order. Offer of marriage elicited. Alarmed by the threat that they will unite me to the Prince of Hesse. Not betray who the friends are who will render me their aid. Secret marriage arranged. Time presses, To-morrow night. All is in order. The Media Nocte, too, confessed. Only one thing is still wanting. I only omitted telling him that our rendezvous must be in the Media Nocte, and that we make our escape from there. Well, never mind, I can tell him to-morrow, and about ten o'clock the orange-colored ribbon may flutter from my window, and Count d'Entragues will be so rejoiced! Oh, to-morrow, to-morrow I shall be my handsome Electoral Prince's wife!"

She stretched forth her arms, as if she would embrace, although he was invisible, the handsome, beloved youth, whose kisses yet burned upon her lips. Her flaming eyes wandered over the apartment, as if she still hoped to find there his fine and slender shape. Now, not finding him, she sighed heavily and fixed her eyes upon the great portrait, which hung upon the wall above the divan. It was the half-length likeness of a woman, a queen, as was shown by the diadem of pearls surmounting her high, narrow forehead, and behind which a crown could be discerned. A rare picture it was, possessed of magical attractions. The large blue eyes, so glowing and tender, the soft, rounded cheeks, so transparently fair, the full, pouting lips, so speaking--all seemed to promise joy; and yet in the whole expression of the face there was so much melancholy and so much pain!

Princess Ludovicka walked softly to the portrait, and lifted up to it her folded hands.

"I, too, will pray," she whispered. "Yes, I will pray to you, Mary Stuart, queen of love and beauty! O Mary! holy martyr, graciously incline thy glance toward thy grandchild. Let thy starry eyes rest upon me, and graciously protect me in the path that I shall tread to-morrow, for it is the path of love! Oh, let it be the path of happiness as well! Mary Stuart, pray for me, and protect me, your grandchild! Amen!"

III.--THE WARNING.

"Your Highness stayed out very late again last night," said Herr Kalkhun von Leuchtmar, as he entered the sleeping apartment of the Electoral Prince Frederick William, who was still in bed.

"Yes, it is true," replied the Prince, stretching himself at his ease, "I did come home very late last night."

"The chamberlain has already waked your highness three times, and your highness has each time a.s.sured him that he would get up, but has each time, it seems, fallen asleep again."

"Yes, I did fall asleep each time," answered Frederick William, in a somewhat irritated tone of voice; "and what of it?"

"Why," said Herr von Leuchtmar pleasantly--"why, the painter Gabriel Nietzel, who arrived yesterday, and, to whom your highness promised to give audience this morning at eight o'clock, has been waiting almost two hours; Count von Berg, on whom your highness was to call at nine o'clock, has been expecting you an hour in vain--the horse has stood saddled in the stable for an hour; and the private secretary Muller, with whom your highness was to prepare to-day a treatise upon fortifications, will probably make no progress whatever with the work."

"It seems that I am not to have the privilege of sleeping as long as I choose," cried the Electoral Prince, with a mocking laugh. "My house moves like clockwork, in which there is no comfort or rest whatever, but where each must perform his prescribed service with mathematical exactness, that the whole be not stopped."

"It is in a house as in a state," said Leuchtmar seriously: "each one, high and low, must do his duty, else the whole machinery stops, and, as your highness very justly remarked, the clockwork either stands still or is at the least put out of order."

"Consequently, the clockwork of my house was disarranged merely because I stayed up two hours later than I have been accustomed to do?"

"Totally disarranged, your highness."

The Prince reddened with displeasure, his eyes flashed, and he had already opened his mouth for an angry reply, when he violently restrained himself.

"I will get up," he said, "and then we can talk more about it."

Herr von Leuchtmar bowed and withdrew to the antechamber. A quarter of an hour, however, had hardly elapsed before the chamberlain issued from the Prince's sleeping apartment, and announced to Herr Kalkhun von Leuchtmar, that breakfast was served, and that his highness, the Electoral Prince, awaited the baron's attendance at this meal in his drawing room. Herr von Leuchtmar hastened to obey the summons, and to repair to the Prince's drawing room. Frederick William seemed not at all conscious of his entrance. He sat on the divan sipping his chocolate, and at the same time restlessly playing with the greyhound that lay at his feet, looking up at him with its gentle, truthful eyes. Herr von Leuchtmar seated himself opposite the Prince, and took his breakfast in silent reserve. Once the Prince's eye scanned the n.o.ble, serious countenance of his former tutor, and the expression of perfect repose resting there seemed to pique and irritate him. He jumped up and several times walked briskly up and down the room. Then he paused before Leuchtmar, who had likewise risen, and whose large, dark-blue eyes were turned upon the Prince in gentle sorrow.

"Leuchtmar," said the latter, shortly and quickly, "all is not between us as it should be."

"I have remarked it for some time with pain," replied the baron softly.

"Your highness is out of humor."

"No, I am discontented!" cried the Prince; "and, by heavens, I have a right to be!"

"Will your highness have the kindness to tell me why you are discontented?"

"Yes, I will tell you, for you must know it in order that you may endeavor to alter it. I am discontented, Leuchtmar, because you and Muller will never forget that I have owed respect to you as my teachers."

"Prince," said the baron, lifting his head a little higher--"Prince, have we two behaved ourselves so as no longer to deserve your respect?"

"Respect, indeed; but you confound respect with obedience, and wish me to obey you unreservedly, as if I were still a boy, subject to his teachers."

"While now you would say you are a Prince arrived at years of majority, who no longer needs a teacher, and whose earlier preceptors are now only his subjects, dependent upon him."

"No, I would not say that; and it is exceedingly obliging in you to carry your guardianship so far as even to interpret what I would say. Meanwhile, you have made a remark which claims my attention. You said that I was a Prince in my majority?"

"Certainly, your highness, you are a major in so far as the laws of the electoral house of Brandenburg allow the Electoral Prince, in case of his father's death, if he has attained his sixteenth year, to a.s.sume the reins of government, independent of governor or regent."

"Consequently, if my father were to die (which G.o.d forbid!) I might administer the government independently, in my own right?"

"Independently and in your own right, your highness."

"Whence comes it then that I, who might undertake the government of a whole country, am yet perpetually under restraint in the conduct of my own private life, watched over and treated like an irresponsible boy? It grieves me, Herr von Leuchtmar, to be forced to remind you that the time for my education is past, for I am not sixteen years old, but already several weeks advanced in my eighteenth year."

"I thank your highness for this admonition," replied the baron quietly, "and I confess that without it I should not have known that your education was finished."

"Sir, you insult me! So you still regard me as nothing but a boy?"

"No, your highness, as a man, and I believe that Socrates was right when he said, 'The education of man begins in the cradle and ends only in the grave.'"

"You know very well that he meant it in a widely different sense. Our talk is not now of actual education, but of the relations of pupil and teacher.

The time of my pupilage is past, Sir Baron, and you will bear in mind, I beg, that I no longer sit in the schoolroom."

"That, again, I did not know," said Leuchtmar gently, "and again in my defense I cite the wise Socrates, who said, 'Man is learning his whole life long, to confess at last that the only certain knowledge he has attained is that he knows nothing.'"

"Maxims and maxims forever!" cried the Prince impatiently. "You want to evade me--you purposely misunderstand me. Well, then, candidly speaking, I am sick and tired of being everlastingly found fault with, watched over, tutored and spied upon, and once for all I beg that a stop be put to all this."

"Will your highness do me the favor to say who it is that finds fault with, watches over, tutors, and spies upon you?"

"Why, yes--you, Baron Kalkhun von Leuchtmar, you and the private secretary Muller, you two first and foremost do those very things."