“Will you swear it?” she coldly replied.
“I swear that I accept your conditions.”
“Bring the writing-materials from the window-niche, and seat yourself by this table.”
Ebenstreit brought them, and seated himself by the Florentine mosaic table, near which Marie was standing.
She drew from her pocket a paper, which she unfolded and placed before him to sign. “Sign this with your full name, and add, ‘With my own free will and consent,’” she commandingly ordered him.
“But you will first make known to me the contents?”
“You have sworn to sign it,” she said, “and unless you accept my conditions, you are welcome to be incarcerated for life in the debtor’s prison. You have only to choose. If you decide in the negative, I will exert myself that your creditors do not free you. I should trust in the justice of God having sent you there, and that man in miserable pity should not act against His will in freeing you. Now decide; will you sign the paper, or go to prison as a dishonorable bankrupt?”
He hastily seized the pen and wrote his name, handing the paper to Marie, sighing.
“You have forgotten to add the clause, ‘With my own free will and consent,’” she replied, hastily glancing at it, letting the paper drop like a wilted leaf, and her eyes flashing with scorn.
Ebenstreit saw it, and as he again handed her the paper, he exclaimed, “I read in your eyes the intense hate you bear me.”