"I had the honor to recognize your highness when you were yet in the boat, and I stood on the shore," said Count Munster, smiling and bowing respectfully.
"And why did you not tell me so?" asked the duke, eagerly.
"Because I respected your incognito, your highness," said the count.
The duke shook his head, which was covered with dark, curly hair. "No etiquette, count," he said, almost indignantly. "I am nothing but a poor soldier, who scarcely knows where to lay his head, whom grief is tormenting, and whose hunger for vengeance is not appeased."
"There will be a time when all those who are hungry, like your highness, will be satisfied," said Justus Gruner, solemnly.
"If you speak the truth, my friend," exclaimed the duke, with emphasis, "the eyes of my blind father, who died in despair, will reopen, and he will look down with blissful tears upon the delivered world. And they will blot out his last dying words, that are burning like fire in my heart. 'Oh, what a disgrace! what a disgrace!' were the last words my father uttered. I hear them night and day; they are always resounding in my ears like the death-knell of Germany; they are ever smarting in my heart like an open wound. Germany is groaning and lamenting, for Napoleon's foot is still on her neck, and, mortally wounded and blinded like my father, we are all crying, 'Oh, what a disgrace! what a disgrace!'"
"But the time will soon come when our wounds will heal," said Count Munster, gravely. "Our night is passing, the morning dawns, and the star of Bonaparte will fade forever."
"I do not think it," said the duke, sighing. "It is still shining over our heads—he is rather like a threatening meteor, and its eccentric course is over the snow-fields of Russia. But hush! footsteps are approaching." The duke was not mistaken. They heard the door of the hut violently open and close, and shortly after some one rapped at the locked door.
"The password!" shouted Count Munster, putting his hand on the key.
"Il est temps de finir!" replied a sonorous voice outside.