"But why do you not release yourself from surroundings so distasteful?" asked the princess. "Why do you not find strength to withdraw, if not to the world of spirits, at least to that of the intellect?"
"Your Highness," replied Ottmar, after a slight pause, "if I could take with me to that realm what has hitherto chained me to the court, how gladly would I resign this whirl of society! But so long as the object of my holiest longing is still clasped in the arms of the world, so long I will at least maintain a place near her, and fill it as well as I am able."
With these words he cast upon the princess one of the glances whose power he had so often tried. She involuntarily turned her head to see if any one could hear her.
"Herr von Ottmar," said she, and her voice became lower, her expression more sympathetic, "may I speak to you frankly?"
"Oh, my most gracious, benevolent friend!" murmured Heinrich, in a tone whose submissive devotion produced an irresistible influence upon the impressionable soul of the princess.
"Do not imagine that I have not perceived your design of winning me by flattery; I have read that, as well as your whole character. I am gracious enough to forgive you for placing the same estimate upon me as upon every other woman whom you may have misled by similar speeches. I forgive you, because I believe you to be greater than such arts would make you appear; you possess no false nature, and if you deceive it is only in cases which have no connection with your secret life, and no reality for you. Where you have to answer for yourself, your own established convictions, you will be true. I have this confidence in you, and therefore can calmly look on and see you make sport of the men and circumstances which, from your lofty stand-point, must appear so small; nay, I can even see you test your superiority over myself; and while I know all you say is false, am unable, I frankly confess, to resist the charm which your masterly acting exerts over me, and feel attracted towards you as the ignorant man is drawn to the artist whose skill he admires. Do not deny the truth of my assertion. Be noble; or, better still, show yourself to me as you really are, and confess I am right."
"Princess," cried Ottmar, "you are right. I grant that you have understood me; but I must oppose you in one thing, that I have been hypocritical to you. Ten minutes ago you might perhaps have termed me a flatterer, but now everything I said has become simple truth, and I should have far more to say to you if time and opportunity favored me." "I fear this is the last opportunity I shall have of speaking to you undisturbed, and therefore I speak now. I know you will not remain here under existing circumstances, and was not willing to have you go without taking with you on your weary way a word of conciliation, perhaps of warning; for you do not deserve the sentence passed upon you, and it grieves me deeply to see a noble, great-hearted man so misunderstood through his own fault."
"Has it already gone so far?" asked Ottmar, in surprise.
"Unfortunately, yes, my friend. You are considered a very dangerous man. Your enemies have decried you as a secret agent of the Jesuits, and at last placed before the prince proofs that you spent a year as a student in the Jesuit college at Rome. Your whole secret is betrayed." "And do they not suppose," replied Ottmar, "that the Jesuits would know how to guard such a secret better, unless it suited their interests to reveal it?"
"You must consider that you are at a Protestant court. You have hitherto passed for a free-thinker, now you are discovered to be a pupil of the Jesuits. Thus one or the other must be false; people find themselves mistaken in you, and are so blindly enraged that they will believe your enemies rather than you. They consider everything you have done and are doing against the Jesuits to be merely a mask. The cordiality which several gentlemen, who are known to be adherents of the order, showed you this evening confirmed the prince still more in his opinion. You know his passionate temper; I have just heard a conversation between him and the minister which I have neither time nor inclination to repeat; but my conscience urged me to warn you, and--"