"Yes, Hartmut has something about him which bewitches one," exclaimed Regine, half angry at her own irresolution. "If he did not look at me with those big black eyes of his while he begged and flattered, I might be able to resist him. You are right, he is a dangerous lad."
"Well, we've had enough of Hartmut for this morning. The question which interests me concerns the education of your own son. You have really decided—"
"To keep him here. Don't bother yourself about him, Herbert; you may be a great diplomatist, and have the politics of the whole country in your pocket, but I wont give my boy into your keeping; he belongs to me alone, and I intend to keep him, and—that's enough."
A sounding blow on the table accompanied the "that's enough." Then the ruling lady of Burgsdorf rose from her chair and left the room. Her brother shrugged his shoulders and said half aloud: "He can grow up an ignorant country squire for all of me—perhaps it's the best thing for him after all."
Hartmut and Willibald had, in the meantime, reached the tolerably extensive forest which belonged to the estate. The Burgsdorf fish pond, a lonely, reedy sheet of water in the middle of the wood, lay glittering in the sun in the still morning hours. Willibald had chosen for himself a shady place upon the bank, and gave himself up, with as much perseverance as comfort, to the delights of angling, while the impatient Hartmut wandered here and there, now scaring a bird, now breaking off a branch for the blossoms, and at last, after a series of gymnastic performances, seating himself on the trunk of an old tree which lay half in the water. "Can you never be quiet in any place? You frighten the fish away every time," exclaimed Will, out of humor. "I've caught nothing at all to-day!"
"How can you sit for hours on the one spot waiting for the stupid fish to bite?" retorted Hartmut. "Ah, you can spend the whole long year in the woods if you desire, you are free, free."
"Are you a prisoner, then?" asked his friend. "You and your comrades are out daily, are you not?"
"But never alone, never without supervision and control. We are always and eternally in the service, even in recreation hours. O how I hate it, this service, and the whole slavish life."
"But Hartmut, what if your father heard you?"
"Oh, then he would punish me again as he always does. He has nothing else for me but force and punishment, all for my own good—that goes without saying."