"The boy's error!" repeated Falkenried, just as harshly as before. "Yes, they called it so to make it possible for me to remain in the army. I name it differently, and so does every one of my comrades. You were to have been an ensign. In a few weeks it would have been desertion of the standard by law also. I have never considered it anything else. You had been raised in the strict discipline of honor of our caste, and knew what you did, for you were no longer a boy. He who flees secretly from the military service which he owes his fatherland is a deserter; he who breaks a vow--a given word--is without honor. You did both! But of course you and your kind pass over such things easily."
Hartmut clenched his teeth; his whole body trembled at these merciless words, and his voice sounded hollow, choked, as he answered:
"Enough, father. I cannot bear it. I wished to bow before you--wished to submit--but you yourself drive me from you. This is the same cruel sternness with which you drove my mother from you. I know it from her own lips. Whatever her later life was, and however through it my own has developed--this severity alone has been the cause of it."
The Colonel folded his arms, and an expression of unspeakable disdain quivered around his mouth.
"From her own lips you know? Possibly. No woman has sunk so deeply but she would try to veil such a truth from her son. I did not wish to pollute your ears at that time with this truth, for you were innocent and pure. Now you will probably understand me when I tell you that the separation was a demand of honor. The man who stained my honor fell by my bullet, and she who betrayed me--I pushed from me."
Hartmut became white as death at this disclosure. He had never thought that. He had fully believed that only the harshness which lay in his father's character had caused the separation. The remembrance of his mother fell lower and lower; he had loved her just as ardently as she had loved him, even when he felt at times that she was his ruin.
"I wished to protect you from the poisonous breath of this presence and influence," continued Falkenried. "Fool that I was! You were lost to me even without the coming of your mother. You bear her features; it is her blood that courses through your veins, and it would have demanded its dominion sooner or later. You would have become anyway what you are now--a homeless adventurer, who does not recognize his fatherland and his honor."
"This is too much!" burst forth Hartmut wildly. "I shall not permit myself to be so abused, even by you. I see now that no reconciliation between us is possible. I go, but the world will judge differently from you. It has already crowned my first work, and I shall force from it the appreciation which my own father keeps from me."
The Colonel looked at his son--something awful was in the glance; then he said icily and slowly, emphasizing each word: "Then take care also that the world does not learn that the 'crowned poet' did a spy's service two years ago at Paris."
Hartmut shrank as if hit by a bullet.