"You said just now, Brandow, that you loved your child: it was a lie; if you had done so even a little, for her sake you would at least have kept yourself innocent of crime. You have never loved any one except yourself, and that with a coarse, vain, egotistical love, which had no trace of respect for the sacredness of that which even the roughest men reverence. Yet--although this is my honest opinion--I am a man, and may be mistaken; perhaps it will touch your heart, when you hear that your child is ill, very ill--that we shall possibly only be able to prolong her innocent young life a few days. It is terrible to say it, but I cannot lighten the burden you have laid upon your conscience: if it dies, you have killed it."
"I?" faltered Brandow; "I?"
"Yes, you! You who made life worthless to her mother," replied Gotthold, turning to Brandow. "Or did you think the blow you dealt the mother would not strike the child, too? That the latter would not drink death from the poisoned cup of life you gave the former? You cannot have thought so, for you had based your whole plan upon this mutual love between the mother and child; you thought the bond that united their souls strong enough to bear your whole shameful web of falsehood and deceit, treachery and violence. I say once more: if it dies, you have killed it. Understand this clearly, man, if you can. It is so horrible that everything else you have done is innocent in comparison; it is so fearful that you must realize it."
Gotthold walked several paces, and then paused before his enemy, who sat cowering in his chair with his head resting on his hands.
"Brandow, they say that years ago, when, struck down by your sword, I lay on the ground before you, you dealt me a second blow. It has always been impossible for me to believe it, even now it is difficult; but however that may be, I cannot give a death-blow to any one lying on the ground, no matter who he is, or what he may have done; but neither can I hold out my hand to a worthless man, even if he extends his imploringly to me. Remember this, Brandow. Perhaps the moment will come sooner than you believe possible."
Gotthold left the room; Brandow still sat in the same attitude into which he had first sunk, staring steadily at the carpet. A dreary smile flitted over his pale face.
"That was a fine sermon," he muttered; "highly edifying! He got that from his father, the parson! And I sit here, and let myself be made out a villain by the miserable babbler, the cursed hypocrite, and don't hurl all he says back into his canting face. Bah!"
He started up and wandered about the room.
"Folly, folly, folly! Her love for this dauber is not a thing of to-day or yesterday; she has always loved him; she has never been able to forgive herself for stooping to wed me, the haughty Princess! I knew it from the first! And was I to pocket the insult quietly, act as if I did not notice it, be satisfied with the crumbs thrown to me? I should have been a fool! Nobody would have done so in my place, and I've only done what any one else would, what thousands do who have not even my excuse. Alma would have run away from her silly husband long ago, if I had wanted her, if I had not always dissuaded her. But that would have been just the right grist for their mill; their only regret is that I have not made it easier for them. And I've made it easy enough now. Fool, fool! How I might have made them writhe, how I might make them writhe, if it were not for the accursed money. They put a stone in my path for me to stumble over, and I did them the favor, and now they stand and triumph!"
He strode up and down the room like a caged tiger.