Leo turned in surprise. "What, father, you here?" he asked. One glance at his father's gloomy face told him plainly enough that the old man was perfectly aware of the events of the last few hours, and had come to call his son to account. Confused and annoyed, Leo bent his looks upon the ground.
"You did not expect a visit from me?" the colonel asked, contemptuously. "You had indeed no right to do so, for old Colonel von Heydeck has never had anything to do with scoundrels!"
"Father!"
"Why, don't you like the word? I should not have thought you would notice it! I have just seen the Herwarths, uncle and nephew, and I know everything. 'Tis the second time a Heydeck has tamely borne such an insult,--first my vagabond of a brother, and now you, my only son!"
The old man sat down, and continued: "I was on my way here to remonstrate with you when I met your colonel; he told me you had declared upon your honour that you would fight no duel, and that there would be no use in anything I could say; that he had your resignation in his pocket, and was going to attend to it. He spoke warmly in your behalf,--my heart was touched by it; you have him to thank that I do not bestow my curse upon you, as once I did upon my coward of a brother, but that I am come to you to ask, 'What are you going to do now?'" The old man looked about him in his son's room, to which this was his first visit, and frowned, as he went on: "If you have one single spark of affection for your old father do not disgrace our name by a Heydeck's painting pictures for money. I know you will answer me that you cannot live on air, or beg, or steal, and that I cannot support you, since my pension barely suffices for my own wants. I know this is what you will say, but I have a proposition to make. Leo, you must marry!"
Certainly this proposition was the last that Leo expected from his father. "I marry?" he exclaimed, with a side-glance at the easel. "Never! How could I dream of it now when I am about to enter upon a new life, in which the struggle for existence will be hard enough with only one to provide for."
"All the more reason why this new life should never be sullied by any occupation unworthy a nobleman," the colonel replied, quite unmoved by his son's words, "Hear me quietly; we must understand each other, and I have much to do to-day besides. Your colonel has promised that your resignation shall find honourable acceptance. I myself will see to it that Herr von Bertram does not go unpunished for an insult offered to a Heydeck!"
"What do you mean, sir?"
"That's no affair of yours; you are not my guardian. If you claim a right to publish your convictions in direct opposition to universal opinion, I, old man as I am, surely have a right to do as honour bids me. I shall do so, and shall see that the name of Heydeck is not sullied; it is your part, as far as in you lies, to keep it clear from stain."
"What do you require of me?"