Frederick the Great and His Family Part 22

Amelia sprang from her seat; her eyes had the old fire, her features their youthful expression and elasticity.

The power and ardor of her soul overcame the weakness of her body; it found energy and strength.

"Well, then," said she, decisively, and even her voice was firm and soft, "I will go myself; and woe to him who dares withhold me! I have been ordered to take sea-baths. I will go this hour to Coslin for that purpose! but no, no, I cannot travel so rashly. Pollnitz, you must find me a courier."

"I will try," said Pollnitz. "One can buy all the glories of this world for gold; and, I think, your highness will not regard a few louis d'or, more or less."

"Find me a messenger, and I will pay every hour of his journey with a gold piece."

"I will send my own servant, in half an hour he shall be ready."

"G.o.d be thanked! it will then, be possible to save him. Let me write this letter at once, and hasten your messenger. Let him fly as if he had wings--as if the wild winds of heaven bore him onward. The sooner he brings me the answer of the duke, the greater shall be his reward. Oh, I will reward him as if I were a rich queen, and not a poor, forsaken, sorrowful princess."

"Write, princess, write," cried Pollnitz, eagerly: "but not have the goodness to give me the hundred louis d'or before Mademoiselle Marwitz returns. I promised them to Weingarten for his news; you can add to them the ducats you were graciously pleased to bestow upon me."

Amelia did not reply; she stepped to the table and wrote a few lines, which she handed to Pollnitz.

"Take this," said she, almost contemptuously; "it is a draft upon my banker, Orguelin. I thank you for allowing your services to be paid for; it relieves me from all call to grat.i.tude. Serve me faithfully in future, and you shall ever find my hand open and my purse full. And now give me time to write to the duke, and--"

"Princess, I hear Mademoiselle Marwitz returning!"

Amelia left the writing-table hastily, and advanced to the door through which Mademoiselle Marwitz must enter.

"Ah, you are come at last," said she, as the door opened. "I was about to seek you. I feared you could not find the paper."

"It was very difficult to find amongst such a ma.s.s of letters and papers," said Mademoiselle Marwitz, whose suspicious glance was now wandering round the room. "I succeeded, however, at last; here is the ma.n.u.script, your highness."

The princess took it and examined it carefully. "Ah, I thought so," she said. "A monologue which Voltaire wrote for me, is missing. I gave it to the king, and I sec he has not returned it. I think my memory is the only faculty which retains its power. It is my misfortune that I cannot forget! I will test it to-day and try to write this monologue from memory. I must be alone, however. I pray you, mademoiselle, to go into the saloon with Pollnitz; he can entertain you with the Chronique Scandaleuse of our most virtuous court, while I am writing.--And now,"

said she, when she found herself alone, "may G.o.d give me power to reach the heart of the duke, and win him to my purpose!"

With a firm hand she wrote:

"Because you are happy, duke, you will have pity for the wretched. For a few days past, you have had your young and lovely wife at your side, and experienced the pure bliss of a happy union; you will therefore comprehend the despair of those who love as fondly, and can never be united. And now, I would remind you of a day on which it was in my power to obtain for you a great favor from my brother the king. At that time you promised me to return this service tenfold, should it ever be in your power, and you made me promise, if I should ever need a.s.sistance, to turn to you alone! My hour has come! I need your help; not for myself! G.o.d and death alone can help me. I demand your aid for a man who is chained with me to the galleys. You know him--have mercy upon him!

Perhaps he will arrive at your court in the same hour with my letter.

Duke, will you be the jailer of the wretched and the powerless, who is imprisoned only because I am the daughter of a king? Are your officers constables? will you allow them to cast into an eternal prison him for whom I have wept night and day for many long years?"

"Oh, my G.o.d! My G.o.d! you have given wings to the birds of the air; you have given to the horse his fiery speed; you have declared that man is the king of creation; you have marked upon his brow the seal of freedom, and this is his holiest possession. Oh, friend, will you consent that a n.o.ble gentleman, who has nothing left but his freedom, shall be unjustly deprived of it! Duke, I call upon you! Be a providence for my unhappy friend, and set him at liberty. And through my whole life long I will bless and honor you! AMELIA."

"If he does not listen to this outcry of my soul," she whispered, as she folded and sealed the letter--"if he has the cruelty to let me plead in vain, then in my death-hour I will curse him, and charge him with being the murderer of my last hope!"

The princess called Pollnitz, and, with an expressive glance, she handed him the letter.

"Truly, my memory has not failed me," she said to Mademoiselle Marwitz, who entered behind Pollnitz, and whose sharp eyes were fixed upon the letter in the baron's hand. "I have been able to write the whole monologue. Give this paper to my brother, Pollnitz; I have added a few friendly lines, and excused myself for declining the invitation. I cannot see this drama."

"Well, it seems to me I have made a lucrative affair of this," said Pollnitz to himself, as he left the princess. "I promised Weingarten only fifty louis d'or, so fifty remain over for myself, without counting the ducats which the princess intends for me. Besides, I shall be no such fool as to give my servant, who steals from me every day, the reward the princess has set apart for him; and if I give him outside work to do, it is my opportunity; he is my slave, and the reward is properly mine."

"Listen, John!" Said Pollnitz to his servant, as he entered his apartment. Poor John was, at the same time, body-servant, jockey, and coachman. "Listen; do you know exactly how much you have loaned me?"

"To a copper, your excellency," said John, joyfully. Poor John thought that the hour of settlement had come. "Your excellency owes me fifty-three thalers, four groschen, and five pennies."

"Common soul," cried Pollnitz, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, "to be able to keep in remembrance such pitiful things as groschen and coppers. Well, I have a most pressing and important commission for you. You must saddle your horse immediately, and hasten to deliver this letter to the Duke of Wurtemberg. You must ride night and day and not rest till you arrive and deliver this packet into the duke's own hands.

I will then allow you a day's rest for yourself and horse; your return must be equally rapid. If you are here again in eight days, I will reward you royally."

"That is to say, your excellency--" said John, in breathless expectation.

"That is to say, I will pay you half the sum I owe you, if you are here in eight days; if you are absent longer, you will get only a third."

"And if I return a day earlier?" Said John, sighing.

"I will give you a few extra thalers as a reward," said Pollnitz.

"But your excellency will, besides this, give me money for the journey,"

said John, timidly.

"Miserable, shameless beggar!" Cried Pollnitz; "always demanding more than one is willing to accord you. Learn from your n.o.ble master that there is nothing more pitiful, more sordid than gold, and that those only are truly n.o.ble, who serve others for honor's sake, and give no thought to reward."

"But, your grace, I have already the honor to have lent you all my money. I have not even a groschen to buy food for myself and horse on our journey."

"As for your money, sir, it is, under all circ.u.mstances, much safer with me than with you. You would surely spend it foolishly, while I will keep it together. Besides this, there is no other way to make servants faithful and submissive but to bind them to you by the miserable bond of selfishness. You would have left me a hundred times, if you had not been tied down by your own pitiful interests. You know well that if you leave me without my permission, the law allows me to punish you, by giving the money I owe you to the poor. But enough of foolish talking! Make ready for the journey; in half an hour you must leave Berlin behind you. I will give you a few thalers to buy food. Now, hasten! Remember, if you remain away longer than eight days, I will give you only a third of the money I am keeping for you."

This terrible threat had its effect upon poor John.

In eight days Pollnitz sought the princess, and with a triumphant glance, slipped a letter into her hand, which read thus:

"I thank you, princess, that you have remembered me, and given me an opportunity to aid the unhappy. You are right. G.o.d made man to be free.

I am no jailer, and my officers are not constables. They have, indeed, the duty to conduct the unhappy man who has been for three days the guest of my house, farther on toward the fortress, but his feet and his hands shall be free, and if he takes a lesson from the bird in velocity, and from the wild horse in speed, his present escape will cost him less than his flight from Glatz. My officers cannot be always on the watch, and G.o.d's world is large; it is impossible to guard every point. My soldiers accompany him to the brook Coslin. I commend the officer who will be discharged for neglect of duty to your highness. FERDINAND."

"He will have my help and my eternal grat.i.tude," whispered Amelia; she then pressed the letter of the duke pa.s.sionately to her lips. "Oh, my G.o.d! I feel to-day what I have never before thought possible, that one can be happy without happiness. If fate will be merciful, and not thwart the n.o.ble purpose of Duke Ferdinand, from this time onward I will never murmur--never complain. I will demand nothing of the future; never more to see him, never more to hear from him, only that he may be free and happy."

In the joy of her heart she not only fulfilled her promise to give the messenger a gold piece for every hour of his journey, but she added a costly diamond pin for Pollnitz, which the experienced baron, even while receiving it from the trembling hand of the princess, valued at fifty louis d'or.

The baron returned with a well-filled purse and a diamond pin to his dwelling, and with imposing solemnity he called John into his boudoir.

"John," said he, "I am content with you. You have promptly fulfilled my commands. You returned the seventh day, and have earned the extra thalers. As for your money, how much do I owe you?"

"Fifty-three thalers, four groschen, and five pennies."

"And the half of this is--"

"Twenty-seven thalers, fourteen groschen, two and a half pennies," said John, with a loudly beating heart and an expectant smile. He saw that the purse was well filled, and that his master was taking out the gold pieces.

"I will give you, including your extra guldens, twenty-eight thalers, fourteen groschen, two and a half pennies." said Pollnitz, laying some gold pieces on the table. "Here are six louis d'or, or thirty-six thalers in gold to reckon up; the fractions you claim are beneath my dignity. Take them, John, they are yours."

John uttered a cry of rapture, and sprang forward with outstretched hands to seize his gold. He had succeeded in gathering up three louis d'or, when the powerful hand of the baron seized him and held him back.

"John," said he, "I read in your wild, disordered countenance that you are a spendthrift, and this gold, which you have earned honestly, will soon be wasted in boundless follies. It is my duty, as your conscientious master and friend, to prevent this. I cannot allow you to take all of this money--only one-half; only three louis d'or. I will put the other three with the sum which I still hold, and take care of it for you."

With an appearance of firm principle and piety, he grasped the three louis d'or upon which the sighing John fixed his tearful eyes.