“Do you mean to say that you actually struck your superior officer! and that, after committing this unpardonable crime, you made matters worse by deserting, like a coward, instead of at least displaying the courage to remain and face the consequences, whatever they might be? Great God, that I should live to see this day?”
Frederick, who by this time thoroughly realized that the only course to adopt lay in throwing himself entirely on his father's mercy, muttered, in a low voice:
“The colonel, who has always displayed the most marked dislike toward me ever since I joined his regiment, summoned me five days ago, to reprimand me concerning my relations with a lady who was staying at the inn of our village—in fact, who had come there on my account.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the general, “I was sure of it. Another of those insane scrapes into which you are always being led by some disreputable cocotte.”
“Stay, father,” interrupted Frederick. “Not a word more, I entreat you. It was just for such a remark that I struck my colonel. I will not hear a word against the woman who is my wife.”
“Your wife! your wife! Do you want me to believe that you have married without my consent—without the permission of the military authorities—without the approval of your family and of your king? Who, then, is the woman whom you were so ashamed to acknowledge?”
“A pure and noble-hearted girl, whose only sin is her humble birth,” retorted Frederick.
“Enough, sir! Tell me her name, and how you came to know her.”
“Her name was Rose Hartmann, and she——Well, she was a shop-girl at Louise's when I first made her acquaintance.”
The general had by this time become perfectly calm, but it was a calm that boded far worse than his former anger.