The Youth of the Great Elector Part 45

"Well," said the Princess, smilingly surveying the group, "it is our dear, only brother--it is Frederick William."

"You are a little blockhead!" exclaimed the Electress, shrugging her shoulders and smiling.

"You are a dear little rogue," said Frederick William, tenderly embracing his willful sister. She playfully broke away from him, dancing through the hall, and challenging her brother to pursue and overtake her. Princess Louise said not a word, but the blush upon her cheeks died away, and the expression of horror and alarm vanished from her features.

Still Princess Hedwig Sophie kept up her frolic, and as often as the Prince thought he had caught her she flew off again like a b.u.t.terfly.

Finally, at the extreme end of the hall, he held her fast, and now, laughingly and tenderly, she flung her arms about his neck, and whispered softly: "Expect me this evening in your room at nine o'clock. I have something important to tell you. Silence!"

Again she let him go, and continued to hop about, laughing merrily and cheerfully as a child.

And in the evening, when the clock in the great corridor had just struck the ninth hour, the Princess Hedwig Sophie slipped unperceived into the room of her brother, who already held the door open for her and awaited her coming.

"Look, here you are, my princess of the fairies," said he, smiling. "What is there now on hand, and what playful scheme are you revolving in your mind to-day?"

But the countenance of the Princess exhibited no signs of playfulness. It was pale, and her whole being seemed under the influence of violent excitement.

"Frederick," she said hurriedly, "I have a dreadful secret to confide to you. Our sister Louise loves Count Adolphus Schwarzenberg."

"I thought as much," murmured the Prince.

"I have known it for a long while," continued the Princess, "but I took no notice of it, hoping that absence and separation would make her forget him. But since his return I have had no more hope. Last night, in her distress, she betrayed all to me, and I must tell you something dreadful, something shocking. You must reveal it to n.o.body--not another one must know it. Do you promise me that?"

"I promise, Hedwig. But tell me what it is."

She bent over close to his ear and whispered:

"She has granted him a rendezvous."

"Impossible, sister, you are mistaken!"

"No, no, Frederick, I am not mistaken. I heard her myself when she told him so. It was in Count Schwarzenberg's hothouse; I came behind her with the ladies, and she thought I was paying no attention whatever to her and all that she was saying to Count Adolphus. But I managed to watch her constantly without attracting the attention of the ladies I was with. My eyes and ears are very sharp, and I saw her press a note into his hand, and heard her repeat to him the contents of the note, appointing an interview with him this evening at ten o'clock. Old Trude is to wait for him at the back side door of the castle next to the cathedral, and she is to conduct him to her. You must not suffer it, Frederick William; that bad Count Schwarzenberg shall not carry off my sister."

"No, that he shall not," said the Prince. "I thank you, sister, for coming to me. We two shall save her--we two alone, and n.o.body shall know anything about it. Even she herself must not find out that we know her secret. We must be brisk and determined, though, for it is late, only wanting a half hour of being ten o'clock. Who is old Trude?"

"Louise's chambermaid, who has been with her all her life, for Trude was her nurse. She idolizes our sister, and would go through fire and water for her sake. What Louise commands is law with her."

"Then we must prevent old Trude, by force or cunning, from going to the door and admitting the count."

"By force, impossible, for that would make a noise; but by cunning. I have it, Frederick, I have it! I will entice old Trude into my room and then lock myself in with her, playing all sorts of tricks, and seeming to have no object at all in view but amus.e.m.e.nt and teasing. I will take care of old Trude."

"And I of Count Schwarzenberg. It is high time, sister! Make haste, lest old Trude escape you. But hark! It will be necessary for you to speak to the old woman, besides. You must threaten her with revealing the whole affair to our father if she does not do as you command, and tell our sister that she waited for the count a whole hour in vain."

"You are right, Frederick. That is still better. Louise must believe that he did not come. To work!--to work!"

The Princess sprang away with the fleetness of a gazelle, and the Prince was left alone.

"I wish I could go to meet him sword in hand," he muttered between his clinched teeth. "I understand their game. They would have poisoned me and carried off my sister, so that she would have been forced to marry him, and then by means of the Emperor she would have been declared heiress of the Electoral Mark of Brandenburg. Ah! I penetrate their designs, and they shall not succeed. Their poison proved inefficacious, and so shall their love! Now away to the door through which the fine gallant was to have entered. He will find it locked, and I shall keep guard before it the livelong night."

The Prince left his own apartments, and hurried down a private staircase and through dark pa.s.sages to the door designated. It was only on latch, but a key was in the lock. Quickly he locked the door, and then stood listening intently. It struck ten o'clock, and as the last stroke vibrated in his ear a hand was laid upon the door latch outside, and a manly voice whispered: "Trude, open! It is I. The one whom you expect! Open, quick!"

"Were it h.e.l.l," murmured the Prince softly to himself, "yes, were it h.e.l.l, I would open the door. But there is no admittance to paradise for you.

Knock on, knock on! The gates of the Electoral mansion are not undone for you. Knock on; the castle of the Elector of Brandenburg is locked against you, and you must stand without, you Counts of Schwarzenberg, for you shall not thrust me out of the palace of my fathers! I shall be Elector of Brandenburg in spite of you, and then, Count Schwarzenberg, Stadtholder in the Mark, then be on your guard! I shall remember, Count Adolphus Schwarzenberg, that your finger rapped at this door, threatening to bring shame and disgrace upon this house! And then, perhaps, I may open a door for you, and allow you to enter, but it will not be for a lover's rendezvous, and the door which admits you will not so easily grant you an escape. Now I suffer and endure, but a time of reckoning will come!

Schwarzenbergs, beware of me!"

For a long while yet the Electoral Prince stood within the door, and for a long while yet, at intervals, the knocking on the outside was repeated.

Then all was still. Frederick William returned to his own apartments.

Early next morning took place the departure of the Electoral family for Prussia. It was to be wholly without formality, and consequently no one had been notified. The Elector had only caused the two Counts Schwarzenberg to be summoned after the carriages were ready, and when they came in haste they found the Electoral family just on the point of entering their several equipages.

"I meant to set out secretly," said George William, stretching out both hands to the Stadtholder, "in order to spare myself the pain of bidding you farewell, Adam. But now I find that my heart is stronger than my will, and I must embrace you once more before I go!"

While the Elector embraced his favorite and received from him a.s.surances of perpetual fidelity, Count Adolphus Schwarzenberg approached the Princess Charlotte Louise, who stood silent and apart in a window recess, looking out upon the street with pallid countenance and eyes reddened by weeping.

"Louise," he whispered softly, "Louise, you--"

But before he could utter another word, Princess Hedwig stood beside him, addressing him with amiable speech, and the Electoral Prince approached his sister and offered her his arm to conduct her to the carriage. She walked along, leaning on her brother's arm, without once lifting her eyes from the ground, deeply humiliated by the thought that her lover had caused her to wait for him in vain. A quarter of an hour later the two clumsy vehicles containing the Electoral family rolled out of the castle gate and struck into the road leading to Konigsberg. The White Lady had driven away the Elector George William, and he was nevermore to behold the palace of his fathers.

The White Lady had saved Prince Frederick William, and as he now drove through the gates of Berlin in that clumsy old coach he said to himself, with joyful antic.i.p.ation: "I shall see you again, Berlin! I shall see you again, dear town of my fathers! I shall come back, and, please G.o.d, not humbly and enslaved as I go away to-day, but as a Prince, who is lord within his own domains, with G.o.d in his heart, a clear sky overhead, and no Schwarzenbergs upon the horizon!"

Wearily and panting for breath the poor horses dragged the heavy carriage through the sands of the Mark, but within sat the Electoral Prince--within sat Caesar and his fortunes.

Book IV.

I.--THE YOUTHFUL SOVEREIGN.

The Elector George William had been gathered to his fathers. On the 1st of December in the year 1640 he had at last closed his weary eyes, and bidden farewell to a world which had brought him much grief and disquiet, little joy and repose, much mortification and disappointment, never a single triumph or solid satisfaction.

The Elector George William had been gathered to his fathers, and his son Frederick William was Elector now. Two melancholy years of privation and humiliation, resignation and oppression, had he pa.s.sed at his father's side, ever suspected by him, ever watched with jealous eyes, and forcibly denied any partic.i.p.ation in the administration of the government, ever struggling with care, even for daily food, and forced to borrow at usurious rates of interest to provide even a meager support for his little household. It had been a severe school, but Frederick William had pa.s.sed through it with a brave spirit and cheerful determination. Across the dark and gloomy present his clear eye had ever been directed to the future, and hope had ever lingered at his side, holding him erect when overburdened by care, consoling him when vexed and humiliated by his father's unjust suspicions and ill will. Not unexpectedly had the Elector George William died; full two months before his summons came, the two physicians in ordinary, after holding a long consultation with the celebrated Konigsberg doctors, announced to the Electoral Prince that the Elector was drawing near his end, and that his dropsy and insidious fever were slowly but inevitably causing death.

The Electoral Prince had had time, therefore, to prepare for the momentous hour which would call him from obscurity and inactivity--time to summon to him those whom he wished to have at his side in the critical hour. Up to the period of his father's death he had been an obedient, submissive son; yet he had well known that as soon as George William closed his eyes he would have to step into his place and be his successor. And he would be a worthy successor! That he had vowed, clasping his father's cold hand. He had told his mother so when, beside her husband's corpse, she had blessed him in his new dignity, and besought his protection and love for herself and her two daughters! Yes, he would be his father's worthy successor; he would force the world to respect him. Such were his thoughts as, on the day after his father's decease, he for the first time entered his cabinet, and seated himself before the great writing table at which the Elector had been wont to sit.

To the last day of his life George William had himself held the reins of government, and, in the timid jealousy of his heart, angrily refused all aid, all a.s.sistance. No one had dared to open and read the incoming rescripts nor to attend to neglected business.

On the table lay whole piles of unopened letters and rescripts, whole heaps of acts awaiting only the Electoral signature. Frederick William laid his hand on these acts which he had now to sign, and his large, deep-blue eyes were uplifted to Heaven.

"Lord!" he cried fervently--"Lord, make known to me the way in which I should go!"

These were the first words spoken by Frederick William on commencing his reign, and on seating himself before his father's cabinet table, which was now his own.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Robbery of peasants.]

He took up the first of the sealed doc.u.ments and opened it. It was a representation from the cities of Berlin and Cologne, whose magistrates implored the Elector to furnish them some redress for their affliction and want, and besought him, even now, to make peace with the Swedes, and to command the Stadtholder in the Mark to inst.i.tute a milder government in the unhappy province. In heartrending words, they pictured the distresses of both wretched cities, which had so far declined that they had now hardly seven thousand inhabitants, while ten years ago they had numbered more than twenty thousand. "But fire, pillage, and oppressions," so the writing wound up, "have reduced us to the most extreme poverty. Many of the inhabitants have made haste to end their wretched lives by means of water, cord, or knife, and the rest are upon the point of forsaking their homes, with their wives and children, preferring exile to remaining longer in these cities, the abodes of pestilence and war. The Stadtholder in the Mark, however, feels no pity for our sufferings, and just recently, despite our entreaties, has had all the suburbs burned down, because the Swedish general Stallhansch was on the march against us. We most urgently entreat your highness to have compa.s.sion upon us in our low estate, and to instruct the Stadtholder to slacken the severity of his rule and to spare us in our grief." [29]

Sighing, Frederick William laid aside the melancholy writing, and took up the next in order. It was a pet.i.tion from the town of Prenzlow, not less sad, not less moving than the first. The magistracy of Prenzlow likewise prayed for compa.s.sion and redress of grievances, and painted in moving words the misery of town and country. "Since," they wrote, "on account of the unhappy war existing, the fields hereabout had been lying idle for some years, such unheard-of scarcity had ensued that the people had not only been driven to making use of unusual articles of diet, such as dogs, cats, nay, even dead a.s.ses lying in the streets, but impelled by the fierce pangs of hunger, in town as well as in the country, had fallen upon, cooked, and devoured one another!" [30]