"Cannot you get over the old grief yet, Hartmann?"
The Manager shook his head.
"I cannot, Herr Berkow. He was my only son, and though he oftener gave me pain than joy, though at last he had got far beyond all control of mine with his wild ways, still I cannot forget my Ulric. Ah, well-a-day! why was an old man like me saved just for that? With him everything went down into the grave for me."
The old man wiped the bitter tears from his eyes as he took the hand Berkow held out to him in silent sympathy, and then went quietly away, Eugénie had been standing in the doorway during the last few minutes; she had paused there, not wishing to disturb the conversation. Now she came up to her husband.
"Cannot Hartmann feel resigned even yet?" she asked in a low voice. "I never thought he cared so deeply, so passionately, for his son."
"I can understand it," he said gravely, "as I could understand formerly the blind attachment of his comrades. There was something about that man which exercised a most powerful influence on all around him. If I felt this, I who was fighting for my life against him, how much more they for whom he fought! What might that Ulric not have achieved for him and his, if he had had a truer notion of the task before him, and had taken it up in another spirit than that of hatred, bent only on overturning all existing things."
His wife looked up at him half reproachfully.
"He showed us that he was capable of something better than hate. He was your enemy, but when it came to be a question of saving one of you, he snatched you from the danger and freely encountered death himself."
At the remembrance of that time a shade fell on Arthur's face.
"I, of all men, have least the right to bring accusations against him, and I never have done so since his hand rescued me from destruction. But believe me, Eugénie, a complete reconciliation would never have been possible with such a nature as his. He would always have been an element of danger, disturbing the peace between me and the people, and striving with me for the dominion over them. Things had gone so far, he could not have been allowed to go quite unpunished. If I had not accused and passed judgment on him, others would have done so. All that has been spared both him and us."