The Youth of the Great Elector Part 20

"Baron," he said, "some one is here who urgently desires to speak to you."

"Who, Frederick, who is there?" asked Baron Leuchtmar, quickly rising.

"The chamberlain, Baron von Marwitz, has arrived from Berlin."

"Marwitz, the Elector's first chamberlain?" cried the baron. "Quick, my clothes, quick! Help me to dress myself. Run and tell Baron von Marwitz that I will be at his service directly. But first tell me whether his highness is already visible. Has he already ordered his breakfast?"

"No, baron, I believe all is still quiet in his highness's apartments."

"G.o.d be thanked! G.o.d be thanked! Now present my compliments to Baron von Marwitz, and then come quickly and help me."

Ten minutes later Baron Kalkhun von Leuchtmar entered the Prince's reception room, where the chamberlain, Baron von Marwitz, awaited him. The two had a long conversation together, Leuchtmar listening with thoughtful mien to Marwitz's narration of the state of affairs at home.

"Marwitz," he said, at the close of their conversation, "we have been good and tried friends from our childhood; I know that the electoral house and our fatherland lie as near to your heart as to my own, and that I can trust you. I therefore tell you, you have come at a fortunate hour, and G.o.d sends you! The heart of the Prince is wrung by a mighty sorrow, and he probably knows no way out of his griefs. You will show him one, and if he is actually the aspiring and n.o.ble-hearted Prince, whom G.o.d has sent for the blessing of his house and the hope of his country, then will he appreciate this way and walk in it. Go to him now, Marwitz, and lay before him candidly and without reserve, as you have done before me, the deplorable condition of things in our native land."

"You will come with me, Leuchtmar, and present me to the Electoral Prince?"

"No, baron. You must suffer yourself to be announced by the chamberlain, for the Prince dismissed me yesterday in wrath. Hush, my friend! say not a word, it is not so bad! The heart of the Prince has reached a crisis in its history which will soon be past, and then, well then, he will call me of himself again. But I shall wait for that. I can not intrude upon him now."

"My friend," sighed Marwitz, "I begin to be afraid. If you do not support me, I will surely fail in my errand, and, like Schlieben, be forced to return disappointed to Berlin."

"I think not. Only be of good courage and speak boldly, as your heart and your love of country dictate."

"Is the Electoral Prince already up?" he asked of the man in waiting, and, as he received nothing but a shrug of the shoulders in reply, Leuchtmar beckoned to him to come nearer, and retired with him into a recess of one of the windows.

"Well, what is it, old Dietrich? You have seen the Electoral Prince already, have you not?"

"Yes, baron. He has not been to bed at all, but still has on the clothes he wore when he went away last night. He is just as pale as a sheet, and his eyes which usually s.h.i.+ne so gloriously are to-day quite dim. He called me, and I thought he was about to order breakfast, but no! Something quite different he wanted, and it struck me as peculiarly strange. The Electoral Prince asked me who was on duty this week, I or the second valet, Eberhard? I told him Eberhard, for his week began yesterday. Then said the Electoral Prince: 'Well, Dietrich, I want you to exchange with him this time, for I would like to have you to wait upon me this week, and Eberhard shall have a holiday the whole week. I only want to see your old face about me!' Is not that strange, Sir Baron? Until yesterday Eberhard stood in such high favor, and my gracious master always preferred being dressed by him. Only yesterday evening Eberhard must accompany him to the feast, and now, all at once, my gracious master will not see him! Something must have happened, for last night Eberhard came home much later than the Electoral Prince, and asked, as if bewildered, whether his highness had been back long; and when I told him that the Electoral Prince had bidden me change with him, he turned deadly pale, trembled in every limb, and said, 'It is all over with me!' Baron, something surely happened last night."

"Probably Eberhard has been guilty of some negligence," said Leuchtmar carelessly. "He has often been negligent of late, as it seems to me. He has some love affair on hand, has he not?"

"Yes, Sir Baron, he has gotten in with that artful chambermaid of the Princess Ludovicka, out there at Doornward, and they are engaged to one another. But people do not say much good of Madame Alice: she is a cunning French girl and--"

"Do not trouble yourself about what people say," interrupted the baron.

"Do your own duty and rejoice that for this week the Electoral Prince gives you the preference over Eberhard. Go, now, and announce to his highness the chamberlain, Baron von Marwitz, from Berlin."

A few minutes later the gentleman announced entered the Prince's drawing room. Frederick William advanced into the middle of the room to meet him, and greeted him with grave courtesy.

"I was expecting you, baron," he said coldly.

"Your highness was expecting me?" asked the baron, astonished. "Your highness knew already that I would come?"

"Yes, I knew it, baron. My mother's court painter, Gabriel Nietzel, arrived yesterday, and through him my gracious mother informed me that the Elector would send you to me with a very serious and angry message. You see, I am prepared. Deliver your message now, baron. Let us be seated."

The Prince sat down in the armchair and made the baron sit opposite him.

His large eyes were fixed upon Marwitz, and burned with a strange, sad light. His n.o.ble pale countenance was of touching beauty.

"You hesitate?" asked the Prince quietly, after a pause. "What you have to say to me is, then, very bad?"

"No, your highness, not therefore did I delay," cried the baron, with feeling. "Your appearance bewildered me, because it pleased me so much. I have not seen your highness for three years. You were then hardly fifteen years old, a n.o.ble, promising boy, and now I behold you with rapture and delight, seeing that all our expectations have been fulfilled, and that out of the boy has grown a strong, n.o.ble, and serious young man. Yes, Prince, I read it in your countenance, your unhappy fatherland, your unhappy, much-to-be-pitied Brandenburgers, may look with trust and confidence to the future, for you will save and rescue them."

"Save them from what? Rescue them from what?" asked the Prince, in cold and measured phrase. "Why do you call my fatherland unhappy, and why do you say that the Brandenburgers are to be pitied? Is not my fatherland, for doubtless you do not mean Germany, but my special fatherland, in which I have been born and reared, is not the Mark Brandenburg now quite happy and peaceful, as it has been for some years past, since it is again under the Emperor's protection and favor, in pleasant neutrality between the two inimical parties? And as to my good Brandenburgers, I can not imagine how you can call them so much to be pitied when Count Adam von Schwarzenberg is still Stadtholder in the Mark--Count Adam von Schwarzenberg, who certainly must have the good of Brandenburg at heart, since he knows how much my father loves him and trusts to him. He will always show himself worthy of confidence, I doubt not, and I have the highest respect for my father's great and wise minister."

"Ah! your highness mistrusts me," cried Marwitz with an expression of pain. "Your highness takes me for one of Schwarzenberg's adherents."

"No, I take you for what you are, the messenger and emissary of my father, the Elector of Brandenburg."

"Your highness would thereby say that this messenger and emissary has consequently received his orders from Count Schwarzenberg, because the count is really lord of the Mark and the Elector's right hand. I read in your countenance that you do so, and that therefore you mistrust me. But I swear to you, Prince, you may believe in my honest, upright intentions--you may believe that what I say is in solemn earnest."

"I believe it, certainly I believe it," said the Prince. "You have undertaken the commissions of the Elector and his Minister Schwarzenberg; naturally you will be in earnest in executing them."

"Prince, I have undertaken the commissions, the behests of the Elector; but from himself and not from his minister did I obtain them. I have sworn to execute them, and do you know why?"

"Why? Simply because you are your master's obedient servant."

"No, Prince, because I am a faithful servant of my country, and because I have a heart to feel for her affliction and distress. The Elector has commanded me to travel to The Hague, and to convey his strict injunction to the Electoral Prince that he shall immediately set out and return home to Berlin. The Elector bids me say to your highness that he has committed to me five thousand dollars to defray the expenses of your journey back and for the liquidation of the most pressing debts. Should this sum not suffice, then am I empowered, in the name of his Electoral Highness, to give security for the payment of the other debts, and your highness is so to arrange your journey that your suite may follow in the least expensive way possible. I was to urge on you seriously and decidedly the propriety of departure, and your father bids me state to you that he has his own peculiarly strong reasons for esteeming a further sojourn in Holland neither safe, profitable, nor reputable. I was to a.s.sure your highness that you were not to be recalled, in order to be forced into a repulsive marriage. At the same time, the Elector desires that you return unembarra.s.sed by engagements, and that you by no means entangle yourself by marriage without his knowledge and consent, for to such a union would the Elector not agree, nor ratify it."[18]

"Is that all you have to say to me?" asked the Prince, when Marwitz was silent.

"Prince, it is all I have to say to you in the Elector's name, and I have herewith executed the commission intrusted to me. But I have something still to add. I have still to execute the commissions given me by your future land, by your future subjects. I have to transmit to you the tears of the wretched, the sighs of the impoverished, the cries of the despairing, the agonized shriek of all the provinces, all the towns, all the villages, houses, and huts in the Mark. Prince, from the depth of their affliction all hearts uplift themselves to you; in the midst of their despair, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the tormented all venture to hope in you, and in spirit they kneel before you and with outstretched hands entreat you, as I do now, 'Pity our distress, future Elector of Brandenburg, have compa.s.sion upon the lands and provinces which shall one day const.i.tute your state. Turn not a deaf ear to the prayers, the hopes of your future subjects.'"

Marwitz had sunk upon the floor, and stretched his clasped hands out to the Prince, who looked thoughtfully into his excited face.

"And what would my future subjects have, what do they desire of me?"

"That you forthwith, without delay, return to the Mark by the speediest way possible."

"I?" cried the Electoral Prince, with a mocking smile. "Your wishes and entreaties, and those of the Brandenburgers, coincide very exactly with my father's orders!"

"Yes, they do coincide, but spring from different motives. Prince, we implore, we entreat you to return; no longer give us over to the caprice, the villainy, the tyranny and avarice of Count von Schwarzenberg. He is the evil demon of your father, of your country. Come home and frighten him away!"

The Prince started, and for a moment a deep glow suffused his pale countenance. His look penetrated deeper into the baron's uplifted, beseeching eyes, as if through them he would read into the very depths of his heart.

"Stand up, Marwitz," he said, after a long pause--"stand up, for you are too old and too venerable to kneel before so young a man as myself. Else, sit down near me, and explain your words more clearly. What good can my return home do, and how think you that I can benefit the land? And first and foremost, why do you call Count Schwarzenberg the evil demon of my father and his country?"

"Permit me, your highness, to answer the last question first, and thus will you understand the rest. Count Schwarzenberg is answerable for all the distress, wretchedness, and misery which envelop the Mark, Prussia, indeed all parts of your devastated and distracted land, for he acts contrary to the true interests of the Elector and his land, being wholly devoted to the interests of his own master, the Emperor of Germany. To this end all is worked and manoeuvred, with this aim all efforts are undertaken, to ruin Brandenburg, and take from it all power and consideration, yea, all hope, in order that it may be rendered dependent upon the Emperor and empire, and become less dangerous. For the benefit of the Emperor, and to the detriment of the Elector and his land, has Count Schwarzenberg concluded the treaty of Prague. Up to that time Brandenburg was the ally of Sweden, now it is neutral--that is to say, it is the prey of both parties; it is visited, laid under contribution, and plundered by the Swedish and Imperialist troops, and can apply for redress to no one, expect aid from no one. With each day the misery increases more and more.

All trade and commerce languish; in the country the fields remain untilled, in the towns the artisans are unemployed, n.o.body finds work or wages. Hunger and want, and in their retinue sickness and death, daily demand hundreds of victims. The Swede has possession of your rightful heritage, Pomerania, and the Imperialists press to invade the Pomeranian towns and lay them under contribution, without thinking of leaving the vanquished cities wherewithal to pay tribute to their Sovereign, the Elector of Brandenburg. Imperialist is to become the whole Mark, the whole of Pomerania and Prussia, Westphalia and the duchy of Cleves. Imperialist and Catholic--that is Count Schwarzenberg's plan, and with cruel consistency he puts in motion everything that can conduce to its accomplishment. To prevent the recovery, the prosperity of Prussia and the Mark is the aim of all his policy. He exhausts the land, and yet more than the enemy plunders and taxes the towns, enriching himself through the blood and tears of the tortured citizens and hungry peasantry, living in luxury and splendor, while the Elector is suffering want, while his land is starved and unproductive."

"Abominable! horrible!" groaned the Electoral Prince, covering his face with both his hands, probably to conceal from Marwitz the tears which stood in his eyes.

"Prince," cried Marwitz joyfully, "you are moved! The afflictions of your country touch your n.o.ble heart! Oh, may G.o.d be with you in this hour, and strengthen you for n.o.ble and great resolves!"

"What do you require of me?" asked the Prince, after a pause, slowly withdrawing his hands from his livid face. "What can I do?"

"You can come home, Prince, come home to the unhappy land whose future lord you are by the appointment of G.o.d. Your mere presence will be a comfort to the unhappy, a terror to Schwarzenberg. On you rest the hopes of all patriots. You are the standard around whom they rally, the banner to which they look up in hope and patience, for which, if needs be, they will battle to the last drop of their blood. You furnish us all with a center and support, perhaps even your father himself, who maybe sometimes fears his own almighty minister, certainly your mother, who longs for her son as her stay and support! Prince, one more last word. I say it with hesitation, I would not even intrust it to the air, and yet it must be spoken--Prince, the power of Count Schwarzenberg over your father's heart is great, and--and--Count Schwarzenberg is a believing Catholic! It would be a new pillar to his might if the Elector--"

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" interrupted the Electoral Prince, jumping up from his seat.

"Not another word! You are right, the very air itself may not hear such words! Bury them in your heart and never again utter them! These are fearful tidings, which you have brought me, Marwitz, and my heart is bitterly, painfully moved by them, so that for an instant I--"