“Why did you dismiss him?”
He related the dreadful occurrence minutely, but took great care that the scene with Douglas, which had preceded, should remain as much as possible in the dark. Now, as the first danger was averted, he had found his tranquillity again.
The clerk took notes eagerly, and the magistrate raised his eyebrows, as if all were already clear to him. When Paul had ended, he made a sign to the gendarme, who turned round silently, and walked off on the way to Helenenthal.
“Now for your father,” said the magistrate; “is he in a state to be examined?”
“Let me see,” answered Paul, and he went into the sick-room.
He found his father sitting erect in his bed; his eyes sparkled, and on his features there were signs of ill-suppressed fury.
“Let them come,” he called out to Paul; “it is all nothing but fiddlesticks—they do not dare to accuse the real one—but let them come in.”
He, too, related the scene of the struggle; but just what Paul had concealed, from shame—the quarrel with Douglas, and the setting-on of the dog—he dwelt on before the strangers with boastful loquacity.
The magistrate scratched his head, thoughtfully, and his clerk noted everything down eagerly.
When Meyerhofer came to the moment in which he ought to have spoken of his son’s interference, he was silent. He shot a glance at him, in which a world of defiance and anger flamed.