His father stood at his desk, above which a hanging lamp was burning. And the lamps were still burning on the brackets before the mirror, there was an uncanny brightness in the room, and an uncanny order, although it was just exactly as Ottomar had seen it as long as he could remember. He ought really to have put on his uniform after all.
"I beg pardon, Papa, for coming in négligé. I was just about to go to bed, and August was so insistent——"
His father still stood at the desk, resting one hand on it, turning his back to him without answering. The silence of his father lay like a mountain on Ottomar's soul. He shook off with a violent effort the sullen hesitation. "What do you want, Papa?"
"First, to ask you to read this letter," said the General, turning around slowly and pointing with his finger to a sheet which lay open before him on his desk.
"A letter to me!"
"Then I should not have read it; but I have read it."
He had stepped back from the desk, and was going up and down the room with a slow, steady step, his hands behind him, while Ottomar, in the same place where his father had stood without taking the sheet in his hands—the handwriting was clear enough—read:
"Highly Honored and Respected General:
"Your Honor will graciously excuse the undersigned for venturing to call your Honor's attention to an affair which threatens most seriously to imperil the welfare of your worthy family. The matter concerns a relationship which your son, Lieutenant von Werben, has had for some time with the daughter of your neighbor, Mr. Schmidt, the proprietor of the marble works. Your Honor will excuse the undersigned from going into details, which might better be kept in that silence in which the participants—to be sure, in vain—strive to preserve them, although he is in a position to do so; and if the undersigned requests you to ask your son where he was this evening between eight and nine o'clock, and with whom he had a rendezvous, it is only to indicate to your Honor how far the aforementioned relationship has already progressed.
"It would be as foolish as impermissible to assume that your Honor is informed of all this and has winked at it, so to speak, when your son is on the point of engaging himself to the daughter of an ultraradical Democrat; on the contrary the undersigned can picture to himself in advance the painful surprise which your Honor must feel on reading these lines; but, your Honor, the undersigned has also been a soldier and knows what a soldier's honor is—as he for his part has respected honor his whole life long—and he could no longer look on and see this mischievous machination carried on behind the back of such a brave and deserving officer by him, who more than any other, appears to be called to be the guardian of this honor.
"The undersigned believes that, after the above, there is no need of a special assurance of the high esteem with which he is to your Honor and your Honor's entire family
"A most faithful devotee."