sitate?" 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 noble, 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, noble, 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