"Hartmut!" There was atone of horror in the exclamation.
"Ah, you are like my father. You regard me as a criminal. You who were reared in freedom know naught of the severities and restraints of that institution, of its tyrannies, to which every one within its walls has to bow in blind obedience. I endured it as long as I could, then I left it, for my soul demanded freedom and light. I appealed to my father in vain; he but tightened the chains--so I tore them apart and went away with my mother."
His manner was wild and excited as he told his short, fateful story; but his eyes, anxious and watchful, never left his listener's face. His father, with his fierce, severe code of honor, had cursed him, but his friend, who adored him, who had professed such a deep admiration for his genius, surely he would understand him, and how he had been driven to take such a step. But this friend was silent now, and in his silence lay his sentence.
"And you, too, Egon?" In the tone of the questioner, who had waited a long minute, and waited in vain for some word, there was inexpressible bitterness. "You, who have so often said to me that nothing should hamper the poet's flight, that he must break all bonds which would bind him to the earth. That's what I did, and it's what you would have done in my place."
The young prince drew himself up proudly, and answered decisively:
"No, Hartmut, you are in error there! I would perhaps have escaped from a severe school,--but from military service never!"
There were again the same old hard words he remembered as a boy--"the military service"--"the service of arms!" All the blood in his body rushed to his head.
"How did it happen you were not an officer?" continued Egon. "The cadets are promoted while very young in the north! Then in a few years you could have resigned. Just at the age, too, when life was beginning, and been free--with honor."
Hartmut was dumb; that was what his father had said to him once, but he would not wait. The barriers were an obstruction, and he threw them down, not recking that he trampled duty and honor in the dust at the same time.
"You do not understand how many things pressed upon me at the time," he explained with difficulty. "My mother--I will not complain, but she has been my fate. My father was divorced from her when I was little more than a baby, and I thought she was dead. Then suddenly she appeared in my life and I was tossed and torn by her hot mother love and her extravagant promises of freedom and happiness. She alone is accountable for my broken word--"
