ves, and on them, covered with dust and cobwebs, the old leather-bound
volumes from which he had drunk in knowledge and wisdom. Before both
windows hung, just as then, the dark red silken curtains, only that the
sun had partially deprived them of their original coloring and interwoven
sickly streaks of yellow. The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its
sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather
armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet. No
one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and,
long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, no preparations
whatever had been made for his reception. Four years had passed over these
chambers without leaving any further trace of their presence than dust and
cobwebs, and faded stripes on cushion and curtain. Sighing, the Electoral
Prince threw himself into one of the two armchairs. The old piece of
furniture creaked under him, as if by this sound it would greet him and
remind him of the past. He leaned his head against the back, whose leather
cooled his temples as if a cold hand had been laid upon the brow of him
who had just come home. Slowly his glance swept through the room, and it
seemed to him as if he saw the four last years glide by like phantom
shapes through the lonely, dreary, and dusty chamber. They looked at him
with wan smiles and lusterless eyes, and hovered past shadowlike, leaving
behind for him nothing but dust, nothing but a hardly cicatrized wound.
Hardly cicatrized!

Sometimes it bled yet, this wound of his past. Sometimes he thought that
there was no healing for it, that it would never close, and that its pain
would never cease.

Just so thought he as the shadows of the four years floated by him through
that gloomy, dusty room. Just so thought he, when the youngest of these
phantoms paused beside him, threw back her gray veil of mist, and under it
disclosed to him a beautiful, rosy female face, with flaming eyes, pouting
lips, and lovely smile, when she raised her hand and beckoned to him,
whispering: "Leave all behind and come to me! _I_ am waiting for you! _I_
love you! Oh, come to me!"

How sweetly enticing were these whispered sounds, how burning was the pain
in the wound but barely healed! Again it began to bleed, again tears rose
to his eyes. He was not ashamed of them, and yet, as he felt them flow
burning down his cheeks, he stretched out his hands deprecatingly to