"True heart," he said, "how true you are, and how you increase the debt which I have never yet paid you, and which I would so gladly pay before it is too late. Perhaps it will be something if I do for you what I would do for none other: if I try to justify myself to you for the part I have played in this unfortunate affair. Perhaps too I owe it to her; and I would fain settle all my debts: I would wish that one man lived who will know, if Prince Carl von Prora falls, how and why it was that he died."
He checked me with a gesture as I was about to speak, and proceeded, his soft beautiful eyes fixed upon the fire which was now dying out on the hearth:
"You think that Constance never loved, neither me nor any other; that it was not in her nature to love, and that therefore no one could be a traitor to her. In this way you attempt to justify me; but you are wrong. Constance really loved me, and still I did not betray her. Whether I loved her or not is another question, which I cannot affirm--which I would not for much be able to affirm. I was very young when I first saw her at that unlucky watering-place; scarcely more than a boy; and I may have loved her as boys love, romantically, passionately, and yet not deeply. I know I behaved like a madman when my father came and said that I could never marry the daughter of a professional gamester and notorious smuggler, especially when the girl was not even the legitimate child of this dishonored father. But this you know: I told you all this; and this was all the prince then told me. But this was not all that he might and should have told me. And his telling me but half the truth while he concealed that which was of most importance, out of what I must call false shame of appearing to his son in the light of an evil example, and out of prudery to the world which had long known him as a pious man and protector of the church, this is the evil seed from which has sprung this disaster for me and for himself.
"I cannot say that the prince's warning was altogether fruitless, nor can I say that I was convinced by it. I was a boy, a wild spoiled boy, accustomed to having my own will because it was my will--my own will often against my will. So was it here. The prince, convinced of my obedience, committed the imprudence of sending me, accompanied by my tutor, to Rossow, to hunt there, to recover my injured health, and to pay court to the fair Countess Griebenow, who was allotted to me by common consent of both families. How easy it is for a youth with money enough in his pocket, to bribe his servants, I need not say. I spent the morning at Griebenow, and the evening--you know where. But you do not know, and probably would not believe upon any other authority, that my courtship was carried on in very nearly the same style and tone in both places. I repeat it, I was young, very young, and youthful modesty and a certain chivalrous sense of honor, which is perhaps native to me, always restrained me, even in the secrecy of Constance's apartment. Whether it was female modesty, or calculation--probably both; for I have rarely found women in which both were not present together--she always knew how to keep me in limits, and scarcely at rare intervals allowed me to kiss her hand. She maintained this rigor so firmly that I was more than once convinced she loved some other; and you can conceive whom I believed this other to be. Thus the play went on which had very nearly been brought to a sudden end by our meeting in the wood, and on the very day following I succeeded in realizing a long-concerted scheme, and carrying off my beloved. I had made her no promises, but she asked none, and no doubt thought all would come right if she played her part well. And she played it just as before; and while we were looked upon by all the world as a pair of unlawful lovers, and were pursued in all directions by my father's letters and couriers, I had received no favor from her beyond the privilege of kissing her hand.
"I had made my preparations so skilfully that I escaped all the prince's researches, though he moved heaven and earth to find the fugitives. He would have started in pursuit himself, no doubt, only his alarm at what had happened, brought on a violent attack of his old gout. And well had he cause to be alarmed."
The prince suddenly arose from his chair, and walked once or twice across the room, stopping again before the portrait of his father, at which he looked with a darkened countenance. He then resumed his seat, and proceeded:
"I had already got as far as Munich, when the old servant whom you have seen overtook us. He was the bearer of a letter in cipher, in which there was important information from various members of my family, and a few lines in my father's own hand, upon reading which I had laughed aloud. They ran: 'I adjure you by all that you hold sacred, to part from her at once if you do not wish to load yourself with a horrible crime: Constance von Zehren is your sister.'"
"Great heavens!" I cried.
"As I said," continued the prince, "I laughed; laughed madly at the thought, and then felt a shudder run over my whole body and seem to settle in my heart.
"The letter referred me to the old servant for further particulars, until the prince was in a condition to write me more fully. He, who from his youth had been attached to the prince's person, and had accompanied him upon all his travels, was better able than any other to explain the matter. He had been with the prince in Paris at the time when Herr von Zehren arrived there in his wild flight from Spain with his beloved. The two gentlemen had been very intimate friends, and at our court the two handsome stately young men went by the names of Orestes and Pylades. But it seems that this friendship was much shaken when the prince married my mother, whom Herr von Zehren had also courted. Whether the prince could never forgive his friend this rivalry, or whether Herr von Zehren, who was a man of fierce and uncontrolled passions, gave the prince afterwards any cause of offence--I do not know: but it appears that the prince was not only fascinated by the charms of the young Spanish lady, who tormented by her conscience, and perhaps as weak-minded as she was beautiful, bestowed upon her lover's friend a confidence which he abused, and perhaps also a love which he only did not refuse.