"The Russian is a capital fellow!" stammered the chief burgomaster. "The Russian has a great deal of money, and spends it freely. I esteem the Russian astonishingly; and my decided opinion is, that we surrender to the Russian."
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIII.
A MAIDEN'S HEART.
Elise had passed the last two days and nights in her room; nevertheless she had felt no fear; the thunder of the cannon and the wail of the wounded had inspired her with mournful resignation rather than with fear. As, at one time, she stood at the window, a shell burst near the house, and shattered the window-panes of the ground floor.
"Oh, if this hall had only struck me," cried she, while her cheeks burned, "then all this suffering would have been at an end, this doubt would have been cleared up: and if my father ever again gave himself the trouble to visit his house, and ask after his daughter, my death would be the proper rebuke to his question." Her father's long absence and apparent indifference tormented her and converted her grief into anger.
During these days of danger and mortal peril he had never once entered his house to visit his daughter. With the unmitigated egotism of her sex, she could not comprehend the greatness, the noble self-denial, the manly firmness which dictated his conduct; she could see in it nothing but indifference and cold-heartedness.
"The most insignificant and unpolished workman is dearer to him than his own child," said she, proudly, drying her tears. "He is now, perhaps, watching in the cabins of his laborers, and does not care if his own house is burned to the ground; but even if he were told that it was so, if he heard that his daughter had perished in the flames, he would calmly say, 'My country demands this sacrifice of me, and I submit.' No tear would dim his eye; his country would not leave him time to mourn for his daughter. Oh, this country! what is it? My country is where I am happy, and where I am beloved!" She sighed deeply, and her thoughts wandered to her lover, her Feodor, the enemy of her country, in whose heart she thought she would find her real country, her true home.
The spoiled child of fortune, always accustomed to see every wish fulfilled, Elise had not learned the power of self-control, nor to bend her will to any higher power. Fortune seemed anxious to spare yet awhile this warm, loving heart, and to allow her a little longer the freedom of happy ignorance, before it initiated her into the painful and tearful mysteries of actual life. Besides this, Elise had inherited from her father a strong will and dauntless courage, and behind her bright, dreamy eyes dwelt a proud and spirited soul. Like her father, her whole soul yearned for freedom and independence; but the difference between them was, that while she only understood freedom as applying to herself personally, Gotzkowsky's more capacious mind comprehended it in its larger and more general sense. She wished for freedom only for herself; he desired it for his country, and he would willingly have allowed his own person to be cast into bonds and fetters, if he could thereby have secured the liberties of the people. Out of this similarity, as well as from this difference of character, arose all the discord which occasionally threatened to disturb the harmony of these two hearts.
Gotzkowsky could not understand the heart of the young maiden, nor Elise that of the noble patriot. To these two strong and independent natures there had been wanting the gentle, soothing influence of a mother's love, acting conciliatingly on both. Elise's mother had died while she was young, and the child was left to the care of strangers. Her father could seldom find time to be with his daughter; but, though seldom personally present, yet his whole soul was faithfully, unalterably devoted to her. Elise did not suspect this, and in consequence of seldom seeing or meeting him, and the want of mutual intercourse, the heart of his daughter became estranged from him, and in the soul of this young girl, just budding into life, brought up without companions, in the midst of wealth and plenty, arose at first the doubt, and later the conviction, of the indifference of her father toward his only child. But proud as she was, and full of a feeling of independence, she never met him with a reproach or complaint, but withdrew into herself, and as she believed herself repelled, strove also, on her part, to emancipate herself.