"This to Herr Hartwig at once!" he said, holding out to me a letter in his left hand, while he leaned his head on his right.
"I am he," I said, taking the letter, and holding his hand firmly in mine.
His hand was cold, and the face which he now turned to me was pale as death; only on the right cheek glowed a crimson spot, as if branded there.
"You here?" he asked, in surprise. "That is very well; now I can tell you what is in the letter, which I will ask you to take care of. It is a written memorandum of our agreement to-day, with the addition of a request to the prince, my father, to carry out this agreement, whatever happens."
I still held his hand, and endeavored in vain to speak a word. If I had needed any explanation of the irresistible sympathy with which this man inspired me, I had it now in my very hands. And this man must be the sacrifice of a base piece of treachery! This man, who through all temptations had preserved so pure his native generosity and kindness of heart, must be entangled in the snare which his rash youthful foot had touched years before!
This, or something like this, was what I said to him when I found words at last, and I added that I could not endure the thought, and eagerly asked if there were no possible way--none--to escape from the toils?
"Sit down," said the prince, bringing me to the fireplace in which a comfortable fire was burning, offering me an easy chair and taking another himself "Did I not say that you were an original? For none but a man who has preserved to his thirtieth year a considerable share of the innocent philosophy of his childhood, could hit upon the idea of asking a prince of Prora if it is not still possible to carry patiently through his whole life an insult offered him before a score of witnesses."
He said this in a very friendly manner, and with an attempt to smile, but his pale lips quivered and the spot on his cheek glowed a deeper red.
"I am no child," I said; "but it may well be that a man who has lived so solitary a life as mine, is an incompetent judge of the customs and principles that rule the great world. I only know that in my heart a voice cries: this must not be! Must it be then? Are those laws which I confess I do not understand, as inflexible as fate?"
"Yes; it must be," the prince replied. "I also have considered it--not for my own sake, but for the sake of those to whom I would gladly have been something--but it must be."