Helmer bowed.
“I felt I must speak to you,” continued the prince. “I wanted to tell you how deeply your address stirred me. A light seemed to rise before me, and I cannot tell you in merely a couple of words what I see in this light.”
Helmer expressed his thanks for these friendly words of recognition. He, indeed, cherished a high opinion of the prince, and therefore his praise gave him a real pleasure. And yet he was overmastered by a gnawing bitterness as he stood facing the handsome, manly, young prince. No self-deception availed any more; he was obliged to confess: the horrible tormenting passion so allied to envy—jealousy—began to poison his mind. How he had thought himself superior to such a feeling ... he had even encouraged Franka to bestow her love on this splendid young man, and had taken pleasure in his own magnanimity ... and now this evil passion had him in its clutches! There was only one cure for it: absence! The week at Lucerne was nearing its end and then their ways would diverge—his and Franka’s. Besides, he had his great solace: art, labor. For some time the idea of a new drama had been gradually dawning in his mind, So, as soon as he should be back, he would immediately gird himself to the task of writing it. As if in line with this idea, the prince now asked:—
“Have you conceived the idea of writing any new poem. It will be difficult for you to surpass ‘Schwingen’!”
“I am going to write a drama, Your Royal Highness. I have the notion that one can speak in that way more directly, more persuasively to one’s contemporaries than in an epic.”
“Scarcely more persuasively than you spoke to-day. I thank you once more for the vistas which you opened up before me. Auf wiedersehen, Herr Helmer!” He shook Helmer’s hand and left him.
A minute later Helmer found Franka. She hastened up to him.
“Ah, Brother Chlodwig, at last,” she cried.
“I say ‘at last.’ I had such a longing to see you. You must tell me....”
“Oh, I have ever so much to say to you,” she interrupted. “It almost seems like that evening when I talked with you the first time—do you remember? Or that other evening when you outlined the plan for my career. Let us do as we did then.... We will have supper, we three ... and talk, talk.... If we have supper now with the whole Rose Order, we cannot say half what we have to say. Do you consent?”