"And you forget me?" asked Charles, reproachfully. "You do not care to take leave of me?"
Leonora released herself from her mother's embrace, and encircled her brother's neck with her arms. "Farewell, darling of my heart!" she cried. "Be a good son to father and mother, and remember that you must henceforth love them for both of us. Farewell, brother, and forgive me for being born earlier than you, and thus preventing your being in my place. God decreed it thus, putting us in our own places, and we must both fill them worthily."
"Yes," said Charles, amid his tears, "certainly we will."
A carriage was rattling over the pavement, and stopped in front of the house. A bugle sounded.
"Father, mother, and brother, farewell!" exclaimed Leonora. Then, raising her arms to heaven, she added: "God in heaven, watch over them, and, if such be Thy will, let me return to them!" She hastily wrapped herself in her cloak, and, without looking at them again, rushed out of the room, and jumped into the coach.
"Farewell, farewell!" shouted father, mother, and brother, who had followed her, and were standing in front of the house.
She leaned her head out of the coach window. "Farewell," she exclaimed, "and God—" The bugle drowned her words; the carriage rolled away.
The loving relatives gazed after it until it had disappeared around the next corner, and then returned sighing into the small house. Charles hastened to his little chamber up-stairs to give vent to his grief. The parents returned to their sitting-room. "Oh, how still it is here now, as still as in the grave," sighed Mrs. Prohaska, "for I miss my child, and will miss her everywhere. Oh, husband, my heart aches, and I feel as though I had lost my Leonora forever! Ah, why did we allow her to go? Why did we not keep her here, our child, our only daughter? Oh! if she should never return, if she should die! O God, have mercy on a poor mother's heart—protect my dear child!" She sank down on a chair, and, covering her face with her apron, sobbed aloud.
The old sergeant paced the room in silence. He scarcely knew that the tears, like large pearls, were running down his cheeks into his gray beard. The loud sobs of his wife aroused him. "Hush, wife; hush!" he said, standing in front of her. "It is too late now for weeping. Let us rather be glad, for Leonora is possessed of a brave heart, and has done her duty toward her country and her old invalid father. Let us, therefore, be glad, and sing!" And he commenced to sing in a tremulous voice, while the tears were still rolling from his eyes:
"Ihr Deutsche auf in Sud und Nord!
Hinweg gemeiner Neid!
Wir alle reden eine Sprach'
Und stehen air fur eine Sach'
Im ehrenvoilen Streit!"