With great self-possession the Prince touched the bell. When the valet entered, the Prince ordered him to see that this impertinent intruder of a schoolmaster leave the castle at once. It was done.
Alone with his daughter, he gave her a sharp lecture. Isabella acknowledged that his reproaches were just, but was not her intercession for the castle also just? She unfolded her reasons with such enthusiasm that the old Prince listened in astonishment to an eloquence never before suspected in his daughter. Fired by the spirit of Philip’s book, she saw in the castle a living being, and prophesied that in vain would remorse follow its destruction, as if one were to kill a man and then call in the doctor.
But the Prince was inexorable. Though Isabella’s eloquence had made a strong impression upon him, it was also quite different from the one intended. He could not help thinking that if the Count only saw the girl thus passionately excited he would like her better than he had heretofore; he remembered, from times long past, that young people admire strong passion. This led to another thought—only he was not quite sure that it would be proper to express it. He said at last in his coldest voice: “If you care so much for the castle, let us exchange. I give you the castle and you give me your ‘Yes’ for the Count!”
But now the Princess burned in righteous indignation. She called it a shameless proposition, and affirmed that she would never marry her cousin.
It was her last word. Her father, too, had nothing more to say. The family jar was over.
After that events moved quickly. The Prince gave orders that for criminally breaking the peace of the princely household and of the palace the mad schoolmaster of Neideck must leave the castle within twenty-four hours. Furthermore, the demolition of the castle must commence as soon as possible. The Princess, too, was ordered to her own room for an indefinite time, and the strictest watchfulness exacted from her lady-in-waiting, for the unfortunate girl had shown traces of a mental disorder that could be cured only by a life of utter seclusion. As Count Vierstein was expected on the following Sunday, the Prince wished, by any means, to prepare Isabella for his coming, and thus to awaken love for him in her heart. His orders were promptly executed. The dismissed schoolmaster disappeared from his little house. He had not left the castle, however, for he was hiding in the secret vault, where in the year 1757 he had faced the siege without besiegers. There he spent all his days and nights, except in the evening, when he would steal out into the village, and the peasants would give him something to eat, keeping the matter a profound secret, so that the steward should not continue to persecute him.
The mental condition of the poor schoolmaster, formerly so happy and content, was pitiful. He never thought of his own misery, only of the ruin that threatened the castle, all through his fault. He had renounced his love, only to bring ruin to the castle; collected the fund, only to see the castle demolished; written his history—to have those glorious towers of Neideck blown up! Tormented by remorse, he made up his mind, if it should ever really come to that, he would be at the bridge leading to the Hasen Tower at the right moment.
VII
Princess Isabella, too, was not enjoying a very happy time of it. For six days she did not see a human being save her maid and Fräulein von Martigny. That old lady was preaching repentance in every possible key and tune; Isabella did not listen. In these sermons Count Vierstein was not mentioned as often as he should have been, but the old lady continued to remark at frequent intervals that he would come the following Sunday without fail. Isabella was silent. The readings from the French classics were three times as long as usual; Isabella did not notice it. She only thought and thought of all the suffering she had endured in this stupid castle from her childhood on. She determined to get away from it at any cost. Yet she did not know where to go.
Saturday night had come. Fräulein was just reading in Boileau’s tenth epistle: “In vain do I stop you; my remonstrance is vain—go, depart!” when a distant, dull thunder shook the air, rattling all the windows. The old lady was startled, but kept on reading all the louder; she knew, it seemed, what the noise meant, and was trying to divert her prisoner’s attention. But it was not necessary: Isabella was so deep in thought that she had no more heard the report than she had the verses of Boileau.