e tears gushed from his eyes and fell down upon his grizzly, gray
beard. He clapped his hands before his face and sobbed aloud. The
Electoral Prince turned pale. He fixed a glance full of confidence and
love upon the colonel, and had already opened his lips for an answer,
which he would probably have afterward repented, when Burgsdorf suddenly
drew his hands from before his face and angrily shook his head.

"I am a fool!" he said furiously, "and it would serve me right, old baby
that I am, if you should laugh at me. Farewell!"

He made a formal military salute, turned abruptly and crossed the
apartment to the door. Now, when his hand was already upon the latch, the
Electoral Prince made a few steps forward. Colonel Burgsdorf turned about.

"Did you call me, sir?"

"No, colonel, farewell!"

The door closed, and Frederick William was alone. His large blue eyes were
directed toward heaven with a look of inexpressible grief.

"I have in this hour offered up a greater sacrifice than Abraham, when he
sacrificed his son to his God," he whispered. "Has God accepted my
sacrifice, will he in his mercy some day reward me for it?"

VIII.--THE BANQUET.

The city of Berlin was to-day in a state of unusual stir and excitement.
Everybody made haste to finish his noon-day meal, and nobody thought of
complaining especially that this repast was so sparingly provided and
served in such small portions, and that the dread specter of hunger was
ever stalking nearer to the inhabitants of the unhappy, much-plagued town.
They were to-day looking forward to a spectacle--one, moreover, for which
no money was to be paid, which could be had gratis, just by being upon the
street in right time and struggling to obtain a good position on the
cathedral square, before the palace, or much better, before Count
Schwarzenberg's palace. For to-day the count gave a great banquet in his
palace on Broad Street, and it was well worth the trouble of contending
for a place before the palace, and not even being frightened by a few
cuffs and blows. The whole fashionable world of Berlin, all the nobility
of the regions round about, were invited to this feast, and the whole
court was to appear there. And it was so rarely that the Electoral family
was ever to be seen by the town. They had passed almost a year in the
Mark, but in such quiet and retirement did they live that their presence
would hardly have been recognized if on Sunday in the cathedral chur