"The reason is, that your heart is still young and fresh," exclaimed Scharnhorst, looking at him tenderly, and laying his hand on Blucher's broad shoulder. "Thank God! you are still young Blucher, with his fiery head and heroic arm—young Blucher whose eagle eye gazes into the future, and who does not despair, however disheartening the present may be."
"I am sure you have brought news," said Blucher. "I can see it in your eyes—Heaven knows whether good or bad. But you have news, I know it."
"No, my young firebrand," exclaimed Scharnhorst, "I bring only myself, and this self I should like now above all to lay at the feet of your respected wife."
"Yes, that is true," said Blucher; "in my joy I almost forgot that my Amelia ought to share it. Come, general, let me conduct you to my wife." He took Scharnhorst's arm and conducted him rapidly across the sitting-room toward the apartments of Madame von Blucher. "Tread softly; you know what an admirer of yours my wife is, and how glad she will be to see you. We will, therefore, surprise her. She doubtless did not notice your arrival, for her windows open upon the garden. She does not yet know that you are here, and how glad she will be! Hush!"
He glided to the door and rapped. "Amelia," he said, "are you there, and may I come in?"
"Of course I am here," exclaimed Madame von Blucher, "and you know well that I have already been looking for you for two hours past. Come in!"
"I have a visitor with me; do you allow me to enter with him,
Amelia?"
"A visitor?" asked Madame von Blucher, opening the door. "General von Scharnhorst!" she exclaimed, hastening to him and offering him both her hands. "Welcome, general, and may Heaven reward you for the idea of visiting an old woman and her young husband in their wintry solitude. Come, general, do my room the honor of entering it." She took the general's arm and drew him in.
"Scharnhorst," said Blucher, "let me give you some good advice. Do not make love in too undisguised a manner to my wife, for she is right in saying that I am still a young man, and I may become jealous; that would be a pity! I should then have to fight a duel with my friend, and one of us would have to die; and yet we are destined to deliver Prussia, and to drive that hateful man Bonaparte out of Germany."
"See, madame, what a shrewd and self-willed intriguer he is!" exclaimed Scharnhorst. "He avails himself of the boundless adoration I feel for you to assist him in wandering into his favorite sphere of politics. Madame, the barbarian believes it to be altogether impossible that I come merely from motives of friendship, and insists that it was politics that brought me!"