The professors convinced themselves that there was comfort in this answer. The king evidently did not intend to insist on the execution of the first sentence, or he would simply have ordered its fulfilment.
The professors were hopeful, and no longer opposed the nightly visits of the students to the theatre. A few of them determined to visit the theatre themselves, and see this Eckhof who had caused them so much sorrow and trouble. The students were delighted at this concession, and considered the professors the most enlightened and unprejudiced of the whole body. To show their apreciation of this, they attended their lectures on the following day.
This unexpected result made the other professors falter in their determination. Their temporal good depended very much on the attendance of the students upon their lectures. They found that they must consent to listen to Eckhof and his companions, if they would be heard themselves; and, at length, they determined to make peace with the students and actors, and to visit the theatre.
Peace was now proclaimed, and Eckhof, whose noble and tender heart was filled with joy and gratitude, played "Britannicus" with such power and feeling that he even won applause from the professors.
President Franke was still confined to his room. The terror of a forced visit to the theatre, which would be known as an expiation for his fault, made his nights sleepless and his days most wretched.
At length, however, the answer to the petition arrived, and, to his great relief, he found himself condemned to pay a fine of twenty thalers to the almshouse of Halle; and no further mention was made of his visit to the theatre.
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF SOHR.
Deep silence reigned in the encampment which the Prussians had established near the village of Sohr. The brave soldiers, wearied with their long march, were sleeping quietly, although they knew that the Austrian army, which far outnumbered their own, was hastening toward them, and would attack them within a few hours. This knowledge did not alarm them, they had not so soon forgotten their signal victory over Karl von Lothringen, with his Austrians, Bavarians, and Saxons, at Hohenfriedberg. They did not fear a defeat at Sohr, although the grand duke was now the leader of forty thousand men, and Frederick's army had been so diminished by the forces he had sent to Saxony and Silesia, that it consisted of scarcely twenty thousand men. The Prussian soldiers relied confidently upon the good fortune and the strategic talent of their king; they could sleep quietly, for Frederick watched beside them.
The watch-fires had died out, the lights in the tents of the officers were extinguished. Now and then might be heard the measured tread of a sentinel, or the loud breathing of some soldier dreaming perhaps of his distant home or forsaken bride. No other sounds broke upon the night air. The Prussian army slept. Alas! how many of them were now dreaming their last earthly dream; how many on the morrow would lie with gaping wounds upon a bloody battle ground, with staring glassy eyes turned upward, and no one near to wipe the death-drops from their brows! They know not, they care not, they are lost in sleep. There can be no pressing danger, for the king is in their midst—the light has been extinguished in his tent also. He sleeps with his army.