"Hush, Jock, hush! do not shout," he said, loud enough to be heard by everybody. "It is enough that I read my welcome in your eyes, and not necessary for your lips to pronounce the words aloud. Our much-loved and gracious father is sick and suffering, and we must not therefore allow his rest to be disturbed by loud noises. Be quiet and silent, therefore, and only believe me when I say that I know I am welcome to you all!"
He gave them one more friendly nod, and stepped out upon the long corridor, on the other side of which lay his own apartments. Quickly he went on, opened the door of the antechamber with a vigorous pressure of his hand, and entered. The trunks and other baggage lay in wild disorder, heaped up in the outer hall, and old Dietrich, with a few other servants and lackeys, was busied in untying parcels and unpacking. The Electoral Prince went hurriedly past, and entered his sleeping room. Here, too, he found all in confusion; the dust lay thick upon the unwieldy old furniture, whose cushions were covered with faded and even here and there ragged tapestry. From the walls, hung with discolored papering, a few old ancestral portraits looked gravely and gloomily down upon him, and their melancholy eyes seemed to ask him what he wanted here, and why he had come to awaken them from their repose, and disturb the dust which had been collecting for years. It seemed to the Prince as if he heard this inhospitable question quite clearly uttered by the lips of his ancestor Albert Achilles, before whose picture he was just passing, and whose large, glittering eyes seemed to look out in defiance. Frederick William stopped and looked at his forefather with a sad smile. "I have come much against my will, Elector Albert Achilles," he said. "I assure you, very much against my will, and if I did not think of the future, I would go away again and never come back. But for the sake of the future the present must be endured; therefore forgive me, my great, valiant ancestor, and believe me I will do you honor!"
He nodded to the picture and strode on, advancing into the next room, which was to be his study. Here everything was still exactly as he had left it almost four years ago. The old furniture stood unmoved in its familiar places; there was still the brown varnished writing table at which he had formerly applied himself to his studies, in company with his tutor Leuchtmar von Kalkhun; beside it stood the simple, rude book shelves, and on them, covered with dust and cobwebs, the old leather-bound volumes from which he had drunk in knowledge and wisdom. Before both windows hung, just as then, the dark red silken curtains, only that the sun had partially deprived them of their original coloring and interwoven sickly streaks of yellow. The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet. No one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and, long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, no preparations whatever had been made for his reception. Four years had passed over these chambers without leaving any further trace of their presence than dust and cobwebs, and faded stripes on cushion and curtain. Sighing, the Electoral Prince threw himself into one of the two armchairs. The old piece of furniture creaked under him, as if by this sound it would greet him and remind him of the past. He leaned his head against the back, whose leather cooled his temples as if a cold hand had been laid upon the brow of him who had just come home. Slowly his glance swept through the room, and it seemed to him as if he saw the four last years glide by like phantom shapes through the lonely, dreary, and dusty chamber. They looked at him with wan smiles and lusterless eyes, and hovered past shadowlike, leaving behind for him nothing but dust, nothing but a hardly cicatrized wound. Hardly cicatrized!
Sometimes it bled yet, this wound of his past. Sometimes he thought that there was no healing for it, that it would never close, and that its pain would never cease.
Just so thought he as the shadows of the four years floated by him through that gloomy, dusty room. Just so thought he, when the youngest of these phantoms paused beside him, threw back her gray veil of mist, and under it disclosed to him a beautiful, rosy female face, with flaming eyes, pouting lips, and lovely smile, when she raised her hand and beckoned to him, whispering: "Leave all behind and come to me! I am waiting for you! I love you! Oh, come to me!"
How sweetly enticing were these whispered sounds, how burning was the pain in the wound but barely healed! Again it began to bleed, again tears rose to his eyes. He was not ashamed of them, and yet, as he felt them flow burning down his cheeks, he stretched out his hands deprecatingly to the phantom with the rosy cheeks and fascinating smile, to the shadow of the last year, and murmured: "Away from me! Come not near me, to tempt my heart! I may not follow you—I may not, and I will not."
"And I will not!" he repeated quite aloud, and jumped up from his easychair, shaking his head defiantly and proudly, like a roused lion.
"What will you not?" asked a soft voice behind him, and when he turned round he saw at his back Baron von Leuchtmar, who had just entered, and whose mild, gentle glances rested upon him with tender expression.
"Leuchtmar!" cried the Prince, hastening to meet him with both hands outstretched. "God be praised, that you are here, that you come to me at this moment! Ah! would that you had not left me at Spandow, but had remained at my side!"
"No, my Prince! It was proper that the eyes of the people should have greeted you alone, and that the boy, whom they had seen go off at the side of his tutor, should now appear to them again as a bold and independent young man, who relies upon his own powers only, and has no longer any tutor at his side, but his own sense of duty and his conscience. But why so sad, Prince Frederick William? Your journey was verily a triumphal procession; like a Roman imperator you entered your father's city, and now do I find you here, solitary, with troubled countenance, with tears upon your cheeks?"