Uncle Ernst's great eyes were glowing with noble enthusiasm; but the General's troubled face gave not the faintest response to it. He slowly shook his grey head.
"I must ask you one question, which sounds very cruel, but is not meant to be so, only to bring us down from this region of bright and, to my thinking, fantastic dreams to this dark earth. Does the perspective which you open to my son, extend also to your son?"
Uncle Ernst started, the fire of his glance was dimmed, and some moments elapsed before his answer came.
"The cases are as far apart as heaven is from earth, as far as a thoughtless act intended to injure no one, which he who committed it hoped, I know, to make good, and to which he had been after all led away by fiendish suggestions, differs from a proceeding which was carried out with the most cold-blooded calculation, in the full knowledge of the ruinous consequences to thousands of others."
"And for which meanwhile there can be no atonement in your eyes!"
Uncle Ernst moved restlessly, impatiently in his chair.
"What do you mean, General?"
"Only to remind you, that turn ourselves which way we will, we must always judge life from our own point of view, and we can only measure men's actions by the rule which birth, education, intellect and reflection have given to us. Or do you think that the stockjobber, the speculator, the reckless adventurer, would in their hearts, if such men have hearts, condemn your son as the man of honour, the honest manufacturer does, although he is his father? And can you blame an honourable soldier because he condemns and brands the dishonourable conduct of another soldier, although that soldier is his son, or rather because he is his son? Can you suppose that I would deny my son, whom I have loved as well as any father ever loved his son, whom even at this moment I love with a love that rends my heart----"
The General's voice shook, and he drew a long breath, almost a groan, that echoed shudderingly in the silent room.
"Can you suppose that I would deny him the life which you describe, if I did not believe it to be impossible? It may be that the narrow bonds, of which you spoke just now, have so cramped my mental horizon that they have for ever checked the free flight of thought. But these conditions of thought and feeling exist for the whole class, and must so exist if it is not to be swept away; and so they exist also for my son. Never, under any circumstances can he forget that he has cast a stain upon the shield of his forefathers, that he has himself broken the sword which he received from his commander-in-chief, that he has disgraced his arms, that he could not look one of his old comrades in the face even if they met in a desert, that he must carefully seek the society of obscure men whom he would formerly as carefully have avoided, he who once might stand freely and boldly before his king, whom his king----"