"Ah! that is your game," said Frederick, in a rage. "You dare to speak thus!" He lifted his cane as he spoke, precisely as if he would strike Consuelo. The air of calm contempt with which she looked at him seemed to recall him to himself, and he regained his presence of mind. He threw his cane away, and said, with an excited voice: "Listen to me; forget the claim you have to the gratitude of Captain Kreutz, and speak to the king with proper respect. If you excite me, I am capable of punishing you as I would a disobedient child."
"Sire, I know that in your family children have been beaten; and I have heard that on that account your majesty once ran away. That would be as easy an example for a Zingara, like myself, to follow, as it was for Frederick, the Prince Royal, to set. If your majesty does not put me out of Prussia in twenty-four hours, I will do so on my own authority, if I leave the kingdom on foot, without a passport, and overleap the ditches as deserters and smugglers do."
"You are mad," said the king, shrugging his shoulders, and striding across the room, to conceal his ill-temper and mortification. "I am delighted for you to go, but it must be without scandal or precipitation. I am unwilling for you to leave me thus—dissatisfied with me and with yourself. Whence, in the devil's name, did you get the impudence you are so richly endowed with? What the devil makes me use you kindly as I do?"
"You are kind from a feeling of generosity, which your majesty can lay aside without any scruples. Your majesty fancies yourself under obligations to me for a service I would, with the same zeal, have rendered to the humblest of the subjects of Prussia. Let your majesty, then, think all between us adjusted, and I will esteem the obligation a thousand times discharged, if I am permitted to go at once. My liberty will be a sufficient reward—I ask no other."
"Again?" said the king, completely amazed at the hardy obstinacy of the young girl. "You use the same language—you will not change your tone—ah! this does not result from courage but from hatred."
"If it were so, would your majesty care at all about it?"
"For heaven's sake, what do you say, my poor child?" said the king, with a naïve accent. "You do not know what you say. None but a perverse soul can be insensible to the hatred of its fellows."
"Does Frederick the Great look on Porporina as a fellow being?"
"Virtue and mind alone exalt one being above another. You have genius in your art. Your conscience must tell you if you be sincere. It does not know, for your heart is full of venom and resentment."
"If this is the case, has the heart of Frederick no reproaches to make itself for having enkindled these evil passions in a mind constitutionally calm and generous?"