eavy hammers, and I yearned for just
such hard manual labor. I begged the smith to take me as his
apprentice, and he at once handed me a hammer. I was there but a week,
when the father of the young man who had died in prison came and took
me to his estate."

"And you married his daughter?"

"Yes."

"And does she still live?"

"No; she died, as I am unfortunately forced to believe, through grief
on account of the desertion of our youngest son just before the war of
1866."

"I know it, I know it. I hear that your son is serving in the French
army in Algiers? I know," he said, interrupting himself when he saw my
painful agitation, "what grief this son has caused you. If it were in
your power to send him word, he might, if he would deliver himself up
of his own will, be received back into the army with some trifling
punishment, and might afterward by his bravery distinguish himself, and
all would be well again. But, of course, at present, communication is
impossible either through diplomatic or private channels."

I was obliged to admit that I did not know of Ernst's whereabouts.

Strange it is how a poet's words will suddenly come to one's aid.

"My son is like a different man,'" said I, with the words taken from
the history of my friend; and I was myself astonished by the tone in
which I spoke. I had enough self-command to say that our present
troubles required that all should be united, and, that we should,
therefore, not complicate them by introducing our own personal
interests; nor did I conceal the fact that I had lived down my sorrow
on account of Ernst, and had almost ceased to be haunted by the thought
of him. It pained me, nevertheless, to listen to the well-rounded,
sentences in which the Prince praised the Roman virtue that indulged my
love of country at the expense of my feelings as a father. He seemed
pleased with this conceit of his, and repeated it frequently. I felt
quite disenchanted.

Thoughts of Ernst almost made me forget where I was, or what I was
saying, until the Prince requested me to resume my story, unless I
found it too fatiguing.

I continued:

"When I think of the times before 1830, I see opposed to each other
extravagant enthusiasm and impotence, courageous virtue and cowardly
vice, chaste and devoted faith in the ideal, and mockery, ridicule, and
frivolous disbelief in all that was noble--the one side cherishing
righteousness, the other scoffing at it. In other words, on the on