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You must believe me when I tell you that I had not the slightest premonition of such a disgrace. I believed that part of our fortune was saved, I did indeed you must believe that, father." "No, you did not," responded Falkenried, more coldly than ever. Hartmut threw himself upon his knees.
"I cannot endure force and compulsion," Hartmut broke out passionately. "And the service is nothing else but force and slavery. Always and eternally, obedience; never to have your own way, but ever, day after day, to bow to an iron discipline. Always the same still, cold forms, with your own feelings never allowed to come to the surface I cannot bear it longer!
He little knew that the woman by his side could have solved the riddle for him. She knew what drove poor, unsatisfied Hartmut from land to land, knew the blemish that soiled the poet's name. This was the first news she had heard of him since that fatal night at Rodeck, when all had been revealed to her.
"Yes, at the Burgsdorf fish pond?" Questions and answers were alike short and precise. Hartmut was accustomed to the abrupt, military manner of his father, for in all his intercourse with him, no superfluous word, no hesitancy or evasion of an answer, was permitted. To-day Falkenried was especially abrupt, in order that he might conceal his intense excitement from his son's unpracticed eye.
"I hoped to be when we parted, but the fault is not on my side. Hartmut has become an unsolvable riddle to me lately.
He was so tender, so caressing, that perhaps the Major was not far wrong in saying he would be left defenseless when his son learned of his great love for him. He said little; but pressed his lips again and again to his boy's forehead, and his eyes never left his son's glowing face, which was so near his own. At last Hartmut said softly: "And my mother?"
"I confess I haven't much taste for it, myself, but once in a while Hartmut has a touch of the disease, and it is for his sake that I have buried myself in this solitude." "Hartmut? That is a Hungarian name! It's very surprising that Herr Rojanow speaks such pure German without the slightest accent. And yet he told me he was a foreigner."
But you bear the name of Rojanow " "That was my mother's name, she belonged to a Roumanian Bojarin family. My own name is Hartmut von Falkenried." "Falkenried? That was the name of the Prussian officer who came from Berlin with the secret despatches to the duke. Is he a kinsman of yours?" "He is my father."
I was quite overcome with surprise when I saw him again, and you yourself, told me that he was unusually gifted and in many things showed great talent." "I would that Hartmut had fewer talents and more character," said Falkenried, in an almost acrid tone.
Such was the condition of affairs when Herbert von Wallmoden returned to the court, and he was, naturally, painfully surprised. He had asked his wife casually, while inquiring for others, whether the prince's Roumanian friend had yet left Fürstenstein, and she had answered in the negative. He had not expected Hartmut to leave at once, for the latter had declared most positively he would not.
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