"Was the prince the father of the child which passed for Herr von Zehren's? It could not be certainly known; and the doubts which the prince himself had on this point might never have been removed; for when a few years later the unfortunate woman came to Rossow, where the prince was then staying, and threw herself, with dishevelled hair at his feet, crying that he was the father of her child, imploring him to protect her and her child from their pursuer, and to tell her the way to Spain--at this time she was a mere maniac. But there were other confirmatory circumstances. An old female servant--the same horrible old woman who was with Constance later, and whom you probably knew--declared that her young mistress had told her the secret from the first. She may have lied; but nature rarely deceives, and the prince found in the child, which he contrived to see privately, a likeness of which perhaps a trace may still be discovered in that picture yonder."
The prince pointed with trembling hand to the portrait of his father; but he only told me what I had discovered for myself while he was telling me this frightful story. He must have read in my looks what I did not venture to express, for he continued, fixing his beautiful melancholy eyes upon me:
"You see it too, do you not? We easily discover the truth when it is pointed out to us; and I perceived it while the old woman was making her terrible confession, and I blessed a merciful heaven that had saved me from an awful crime. But how to free myself from this wretched entanglement? Perhaps I should have disobeyed the prince's orders and told Constance the whole truth; but I cannot too often repeat that I was very young, and not in a condition to judge what might be all the consequences of my hasty resolution. So I thought I should be managing with great adroitness if I could continue to inspire Constance with hate of me, or at least aversion, for the love that I now regarded with horror. The means of attaining this end she had herself supplied me in her arts of keeping me at a distance, in which I now was disposed to see more than mere calculation. I returned her caprice with caprice, her obstinacy with obstinacy, her coldness with coldness; I played my game so well that I could not fail to win. What she suffered, I never heard her say; but I saw it in her face which grew paler day by day, in her eyes in which there often seemed to be the fire of madness.
"At last came the catastrophe. After a violent scene, which I had provoked, in Naples, whither we had come on our travels--I do not now know why or how--I parted from her, in the firm conviction that she would employ the ample means I had left at her disposal, either in returning, or in the flight with which she had often threatened me. But this would have been insufficient for the revenge which she conceived such treachery as mine deserved. She, whom I had held to be the proudest of the proud, who refused to belong to the Prince of Prora unless he made her his wife--she cast herself into the arms of the first comer, a wretched coxcomb whose acquaintance we had made by the way. I shudder when I think what this first step must have cost the unhappy girl; but I shudder still more when I think how little all subsequent steps have cost her."
He sighed deeply, and his sigh awakened a terrible echo in my own breast. I sprang up and took a stride towards the door.
"Where are you going?" asked the prince.
I grasped my temples with both hands; my brain seemed on fire.
"I do not know," I said, "I only know that this duel must not take place."
The prince smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
"It is a queer business, altogether," he said.