When the Electoral Prince left his father’s cabinet he found without the officers and servants of the household arranged in solemn order. They received him with a thrice-repeated cheer that was loud enough to penetrate through the door into the Electoral apartment, and to reach the Elector’s ears in a manner by no means pleasant.

Affectionately and smilingly Frederick William thanked them. He could call each one of them by name, and charmed them all by recalling little incidents of his earlier days in which they had borne a part.

“I hope we shall always remain good friends,” he said, when he had reached the door of the long entrance hall, “and once more I thank you for your friendly greeting.”

Old Jock, who stood next to the door, and who looked quite grand in his artfully patched livery of state old Jock had already just opened his mouth for another thundering hurrah, when the Electoral Prince laid his hand gently upon his shoulder.

“Hush, Jock, hush! do not shout,” he said, loud enough to be heard by everybody. “It is enough that I read my welcome in your eyes, and not necessary for your lips to pronounce the words aloud. Our much-loved and gracious father is sick and suffering, and we must not therefore allow his rest to be disturbed by loud noises. Be quiet and silent, therefore, and only believe me when I say that I know I am welcome to you all!”

He gave them one more friendly nod, and stepped out upon the long corridor, on the other side of which lay his own apartments. Quickly he went on, opened the door of the antechamber with a vigorous pressure of his hand, and entered. The trunks and other baggage lay in wild disorder, heaped up in the outer hall, and old Dietrich, with a few other servants and lackeys, was busied in untying parcels and unpacking. The Electoral Prince went hurriedly past, and entered his sleeping room. Here, too, he found all in confusion; the dust lay thick upon the unwieldy old furniture, whose cushions were covered with faded and even here and there ragged tapestry. From the walls, hung with discolored papering, a few old ancestral portraits looked gravely and gloomily down upon him, and their melancholy eyes seemed to ask him what he wanted here, and why he had come to awaken them from their repose, and disturb the dust which had been collecting for years. It seemed to the Prince as if he heard this inhospitable question quite clearly uttered by the lips of his ancestor Albert Achilles, before whose picture he was just passing, and whose large, glittering eyes seemed to look out in defiance. Frederick William stopped and looked at his forefather with a sad smile. “I have come much against my will, Elector Albert Achilles,” he said. “I assure you, very much against my will, and if I did not think of the future, I would go away again and never come back. But for the sake of the future the present must be endured; therefore forgive me, my great, valiant ancestor, and believe me I will do you honor!”

He nodded to the picture and strode on, advancing into the next room, which was to be his study. Here everything was still exactly as he had left it almost four years ago. The old furniture stood unmoved in its familiar places; there was still the brown varnished writing table at which he had formerly applied himself to his studies, in company with his tutor Leuchtmar von Kalkhun; beside it stood the simple, rude book shelves, and on them, covered with dust and cobwebs, the old leather-bound volumes from which he had drunk in knowledge and wisdom. Before both windows hung, just as then, the dark red silken curtains, only that the sun had partially deprived them of their original coloring and interwoven sickly streaks of yellow. The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet. No one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and, long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, no preparations whatever had been made for his reception. Four years had passed over these chambers without leaving any further trace of their presence than dust and cobwebs, and faded stripes on cushion and curtain. Sighing, the Electoral Prince threw himself into one of the two armchairs. The old piece of furniture creaked under him, as if by this sound it would greet him and remind him of the past. He leaned his head against the back, whose leather cooled his temples as if a cold hand had been laid upon the brow of him who had just come home. Slowly his glance swept through the room, and it seemed to him as if he saw the four last years glide by like phantom shapes through the lonely, dreary, and dusty chamber. They looked at him with wan smiles and lusterless eyes, and hovered past shadowlike, leaving behind for him nothing but dust, nothing but a hardly cicatrized wound. Hardly cicatrized!

Sometimes it bled yet, this wound of his past. Sometimes he thought that there was no healing for it, that it would never close, and that its pain would never cease.

Just so thought he as the shadows of the four years floated by him through that gloomy, dusty room. Just so thought he, when the youngest of these phantoms paused beside him, threw back her gray veil of mist, and under it disclosed to him a beautiful, rosy female face, with flaming eyes, pouting lips, and lovely smile, when she raised her hand and beckoned to him, whispering: “Leave all behind and come to me! I am waiting for you! I love you! Oh, come to me!”

How sweetly enticing were these whispered sounds, how burning was the pain in the wound but barely healed! Again it began to bleed, again tears rose to his eyes. He was not ashamed of them, and yet, as he felt them flow burning down his cheeks, he stretched out his hands deprecatingly to the phantom with the rosy cheeks and fascinating smile, to the shadow of the last year, and murmured: “Away from me! Come not near me, to tempt my heart! I may not follow you I may not, and I will not.”

“And I will not!” he repeated quite aloud, and jumped up from his easychair, shaking his head defiantly and proudly, like a roused lion.

“What will you not?” asked a soft voice behind him, and when he turned round he saw at his back Baron von Leuchtmar, who had just entered, and whose mild, gentle glances rested upon him with tender expression.

“Leuchtmar!” cried the Prince, hastening to meet him with both hands outstretched. “God be praised, that you are here, that you come to me at this moment! Ah! would that you had not left me at Spandow, but had remained at my side!”

“No, my Prince! It was proper that the eyes of the people should have greeted you alone, and that the boy, whom they had seen go off at the side of his tutor, should now appear to them again as a bold and independent young man, who relies upon his own powers only, and has no longer any tutor at his side, but his own sense of duty and his conscience. But why so sad, Prince Frederick William? Your journey was verily a triumphal procession; like a Roman imperator you entered your father’s city, and now do I find you here, solitary, with troubled countenance, with tears upon your cheeks?”

“With tears upon my cheeks?” repeated the Prince; “with imprecations, with wrath, and sorrow in my heart. Oh, friend, why were you not with me? You would have saved me perhaps from the bitterness of the last hour. You would have stood by me, would have encouraged me!”

“My God, what has happened then?”

“It has happened that I was received as if I were some criminal returning after a course of sin!” cried Frederick William, with indignant pain. “It has happened that they have treated me as if I were a rioter and inciter of rebellion, who had come hither with criminal designs, at the head of a mob, and as a captain of robbers, who had attacked his Sovereign in his stronghold. It has happened that they allowed me to sue for pardon upon my knees without lifting me up that they have treated me like an abandoned villain, from whom they expected each hour to witness some new out-break.”

“But consider, my Prince, that you had reason to expect that your reception would be ungracious, and that it was your father from whom these trials would come to you.”

“No, not from my father, but from him that evil spirit who, with his cold smile and mocking composure, stood at my father’s side! He has poisoned my father’s heart with jealousy and hate, he has filled it with mistrust toward his only son, and sowed discord, that he may himself reap a harvest from the hatred! And he was witness of my humiliation, and I saw how he looked down upon me with scornful superiority as I knelt before my father and pleaded in vain for one word of love from his lips! But he had withered this word upon his lips, and only for him were words of tenderness and veneration there! Only for him acknowledgments, confidence, and love! As he stood there with cold and haughty face at the side of my poor father, who, stooping and insignificant, cowered below him oh, so far below him in his easychair I felt it in every nerve of my heart, in every fiber of my brain, that he and he alone is ruling lord here, the commander and Sovereign; and that he who will not bow and cringe before him, will by him be hurled into the dust and trodden upon! They all bow before him all! He is like a magician, who by the magnetic glances of his eyes subjects to his will all who approach him, and makes the stoutest hearts soft and pliant, so that like wax they allow themselves to be molded by his forming hands. Even my mother, who is his enemy, who has been battling against him for twenty years, even she is conquered by him, and he has become her master and forces her to his will. She knows not at all that she has fallen within the circle of his magic, yet is, like all the rest, a mere tool in his hands. But she feels it not, and fancies herself free, while she lies bound, and has no will of her own in his presence. I have seen it, I have felt it, and it has filled my heart with unutterable woe, with raging anger. She felt not at all the shame and humiliation under which I almost expired; she came not to my aid, for the magician was there, and in his presence my mother forgot her son so recently come back to her, and he was the center around which all turned, he was master of the situation, and before him all shrank into wretched nothingness. He charmed the hearts which had remained cold at my reception, charmed them with the prospect of a fête, which, as he said, he was to give in my honor, and they believed the mockery, and allowed themselves to be touched by that noble condescension, and felt not the cruel boasting with which he solemnizes the return of him who is a thorn in his flesh, a thorn which he is firmly determined to pluck out, and tread under foot! I came here humble, poor, and empty-handed, and he solemnizes my return by offering presents to my mother and my sisters! And they accept them, feel not at all the degradation, and will appear at the fête in clothes with which my enemy, my adversary, my murderer has presented them!”

“Prince, you go too far. Your hatred carries you away.”

“No, I do not go too far!” cried the Prince, beside himself. His countenance was deadly pale, his eyes flashed, and his whole being seemed pervaded by the fire of wrath and hatred. “No, I do not go too far, and my hatred does not carry me away! He is the evil demon of my house of my country! He is to blame for all the disasters of the last twenty years, for all the humiliation and shame by which my family has been visited. The Mark is to be ruined that is his end, that is his aim; the Electoral house of Brandenburg must die out that is his hope; and he will leave untried no means whereby this hope may become reality. He has already tried once to murder me, and he will try it again. A dagger’s point lurks in each glance that he fixes upon me, a drop of poison in each word that he directs to me. If I stood alone with him upon the summit of a tower, he would hurl me down, and then afterward follow my coffin with a thousand tears! And my father would lean upon him, and thank God that only his son had been snatched from him, not his friend, his favorite; and my mother would weep for me, and yet go about in mourning which he had presented to her, and she would esteem it a peculiar act of amiability if he should exert himself to divert her mind and raise her spirits. No voice would be raised against him, and no one would venture to accuse him, for my father himself would protect him, and the grace and favor of the Emperor would speak him clear of any suspicion. He is my master, my lord that is what fills me with rage and indignation; and I will surely die of this if the count does not succeed in dispatching me first, and putting me out of the way.”

“He will not venture to attempt that, for he knows public opinion would accuse and denounce him as the murderer.”

What cares he for public opinion, what asks he about it he who has power to repress it, he who stands so secure that it can not touch him?”

“Nobody stands so high, Prince, that public opinion can not reach him and dash him into the depths below, for public opinion is the voice of the nation, and the voice of the nation is the voice of God! And believe me, Prince, this voice will one day accuse and sentence him.”

“Yes, one day perhaps, when he has thrust me out of the way and murdered me, when my father has gone to his last home, when the Emperor has pronounced the Mark of Brandenburg an unincumbered fief, and bestowed it as an act of grace upon Count Schwarzenberg or his son. Oh, I know all his plans, and I know that no moment of my life is henceforth secure know that I am a victim of death if prudence and cunning do not save me! I thought of all this during my long journey to this place. I have weighed all, pondered all, and my whole future lay before me like a white sheet of paper. I saw a hand unroll it, and with bloody letters inscribe the word ‘Death’; but I saw this word blotted out by a cautious finger, and, ere it was written to the end, replaced by the word ‘Life’ in characters small and hardly visible. Yes, I will live, will reign, will have fame, honor, and influence, will make a name for myself! Leuchtmar, I have left behind in Holland my youth, my hopes, my dreams, my heart! I come here as a man, despite my eighteen years, as a man who from the wreck of his youth will save only this: the future and fame! A man, who has suffered so much, that he can say of himself: I defy pain, and it has no longer any power over me! I defy life, and will conquer it! Yes, Leuchtmar, I will conquer it; and although I no longer love it, I do not mean to allow it to be snatched away from me. Hear me, friend, for to-day is the last time for a long while that I may speak openly and candidly to you. I entreat you, guide of my youth, to preserve for me your friendship and your faith. I beseech you never to lose confidence in me, and, if ever a doubt should intrude itself with regard to me, to remember this hour, in which I have laid bare to you my heart, and in which you have been a witness to my indignation and grief, my excitement and hatred! You are familiar with my countenance, friend; impress it upon your memory, in order that you may never forget it, even if you should not see it for a long time again. Look once more in my eyes, and read in my glances my love and reverence for you!”

I do look into your eyes, son of my heart, said Leuchtmar, deeply moved. I look through your eyes into your soul, into your heart, and read therein great determination and heroic aims. Strive after them, my favorite, and when the present seems to you dark and gloomy, then lift your eye to the glittering star, which hovers over you and is your future. To endure evil, and still to remain joyful and valiant, therein lies true heroism. To turn from the dust of earthly needs, to step over it with head held heavenward, thereby is true faith proved. God bless you, my son! Be brave, be wise, be true! Trust in yourself, your friends, your people, and your God; then is the future yours, and you will overcome all your foes, and will triumph over the proud man who now thinks that he triumphs over you. I said to you, be brave, be wise, be true. I forgot one thing, though, which I shall now add be circumspect! Remember that oftentimes it is not the sword which carries off the victory, but cunning; remember Brutus, who freed Rome.”

“Oh, my friend, you have spoken truth,” exclaimed the Prince; “you have read to the bottom of my soul, and understood my inmost thoughts. Now am I glad and full of confidence, for my friend and teacher will never doubt me. And hear one thing more, my Leuchtmar. You must accept a memento of this hour, a memento which I prepared even before my departure from The Hague, and which shall be to you a proof of my gratitude. I am poor and powerless, and as I build all my hopes upon the future, so must I do with my presents as well. You must accept from me a gift of my future, friend. I know full well that what you have done for me can not be recompensed, but I would so gladly testify my gratitude to you, and therefore I give you this paper!”

He drew forth a paper from his pocketbook, and handed it to Leuchtmar with a friendly smile. “Take it and read,” he said.

Baron Leuchtmar von Kalkhun took the paper, and fastened his eyes upon the words, which were inscribed in large letters on the outside.

“A Deed of Expectancy!” he said, astonished.

The Electoral Prince nodded. “A deed of expectancy, written with my own hand and sealed with my own signet ring. Yes, yes, my friend, I have nothing to give away but expectations; yet if the Electoral Prince should ever become Elector, he will convert these expectations into reality and truth. Now unfold the paper, and see what manner of expectation it holds out.”

“An act, donating the feudal tenure of Neuenhof, lying within the territories of Cleves!” cried Leuchtmar joyfully. “Oh, my dear Prince, that is truly a princely gift!”

“Yet it is not the Prince, but the grateful scholar who gives it to you,” said Frederick William, “and in proof of this I have written these words, which I will read to you myself.” He bent over the paper, and read: “We have voluntarily and with due consideration promised and engaged to give to Baron Leuchtmar von Kalkhun this estate of Neuenhof, out of the particular and friendly affection which we bear to him. We also swear that if we hereafter attain to power and authority, and our much-esteemed Romilian von Leuchtmar be to our sorrow cut off by death, we in the same way will this estate to his eldest son, and grant him the enjoyment of all that we assigned and destined for his father in his lifetime."

“That is indeed to carry happiness and reward beyond the grave!” cried Leuchtmar, with tears in his eyes. “Oh, I thank you, my Prince, thank you from my inmost soul, for myself and my children!”

“You have nothing at all to thank me for, friend,” said the Prince. “I shall ever be much more in your debt. If, however, I some day become a good Prince to my country and a father to my people, then you must reflect that this is the return I make to you, my teacher, my educator! You see I hope in the future, and think that I shall succeed in evading murderous designs and fulfill my aims. But, indeed, your warning I may never forget, and circumspect I must be first of all. Wear a mask, as Brutus did! Let me embrace you once more, friend Leuchtmar; look me once more in the eye. And now I hear some one coming! Farewell, Leuchtmar! I put on my mask and not for a moment can I withdraw it from my features.”