"I am afraid of life, Oswald! Death is a fearful asylum, in which one may awake again! Suicide is such a death to me, Oswald. If that were not so I should long since have died by my own hand. For it is easier to die, in order to escape from ourselves, than to live for others. I have found that out. I have drunk the bitter cup, and the dregs are very bitter. Oswald! at first I had courage enough, and lived bravely; but after six months of such life my courage is gone and my strength exhausted. My nerves cannot bear it any longer. That is why I feel so joyfully this day, on which the people have at last shaken off their disgraceful apathy to rise in their might. If I could die to-day for this people, whom now for the first time in my life I find not to be contemptible any more--Oswald! it would be such good fortune as I had never expected. And then," he continued, after a pause, "another piece of good fortune has befallen me to-day. I have met again my oldest enemy, whom I hated most bitterly, and my youngest and most beloved friend."
He pressed Oswald's hand, who said, smiling:
"Found your oldest enemy? was that fortunate?"
Berger told Oswald in a few words of his meeting with Count Malikowsky that morning, and that Schmenckel, who had helped them gloriously in building up the barricade, was Prince Waldenberg's father. "The low-born man the father of a prince, the prince the son of a low-born man--that would make a nice novel," he said with a grim smile.
"Perhaps I can give you a companion-story to yours," answered Oswald; and he informed Berger of the discoveries he had made that day with regard to his own birth. "That is strange!" said Berger; "very strange! And did you not tell me you loved Helen?"
"More than my life!"
"And you refused all that splendor to remain faithful to your old flag?"
Oswald shook his head.
"No, Berger!" he said; "I am not good and great enough for that, as you think in your goodness and greatness. She could never be mine. Too many things had happened that could never be forgiven and forgotten. I had preferred others to her, and she had preferred another man to me. That Prince Waldenberg was her betrothed."
"Why do you say was?"