“I am willing to believe, madam,” said he, “that you have no share in your son’s folly and ingratitude.”
“My son is, I hope, incapable of ingratitude, sir,” answered the countess, with an air of placid dignity. “I am well aware that he may have been guilty of great imprudence.”
“At six o’clock this evening let me see you, madam,” replied the king, “at Sans Souci, in the gallery of paintings, and you shall know of what your son is accused.”
At the appointed hour she was in the gallery of paintings at Sans Souci. No one was there. She waited quietly for some time, then walked up and down the gallery with extreme impatience and agitation; at last, she heard the king’s voice and his step; the door opened, and Frederick appeared. It was an awful moment to the mother of Laniska. She stood in silent expectation.
“I see, madam,” said the king, after fixing his penetrating eye for some moments on her countenance, “I see that you are, as I believe you to be, wholly ignorant of your son’s folly.” As he spoke, Frederick put his hand upon the vase made by Sophia Mansfeld, which was placed on a small stand in the middle of the gallery. The countess, absorbed by her own reflections, had not noticed it.
“You have seen this vase before,” said the king; “and you have probably seen the lines which are inscribed on the foot of it.”
“Yes,” said the countess, “they are my son’s writing.”
“And they are written by his own hand,” said the king.
“They are. The poor Saxon woman who draws so admirably cannot write; and my son wrote the inscription for her.”
“The lines are in a high strain of panegyric,” said the king; and he laid a severe emphasis on the word panegyric.