The interview with the Baron was a curious mixture of pathos and burlesque. The pain which I could see Althea was suffering cut me to the quick, and I sought to shorten the conversation as much as possible. But her father was so full of his own importance, so talkative about his wrongs, so insistent upon my complete obedience to his orders, so obviously unable to take a rational view of any part of the subject, and so incapable of understanding the risks and dangers of the position, that it was a long time before we could drive it home upon him that the only hope of success lay in his leaving everything to me.
"But your very presence in Berlin is a danger," said Althea more than once when we were attempting to persuade him to leave the city.
"No one knows of it, child. And I have not done anything if they did. Beside, would you have me, the leader of the whole movement, shirk the danger now that the hour has come?"
"It may get to be known that you were at Herr Ziegler’s house last night."
"I went to prevent violence, child. That is surely no crime."
"And you are placing Herr Bastable in danger by remaining here."
"Is it not his duty to run risks in the cause? Is he to be the only man to venture nothing for our country? Danger, indeed," he cried indignantly. "Have we not all suffered? What of my own sufferings?" and he was off again on his favourite topic when I interrupted him.
"Have you any commands in regard to the forthcoming attack?"
"Ah, that will be a stroke; and it is my own conception"; and as the wind will turn a straw, he went off to the fresh subject and spoke at length about it.
It appeared that a new cruiser, the _Wundervoll_, had just been launched; and the intention was to wreck her as she lay waiting to be taken to be fitted up. The bomb which, thank Heaven, lay at the bottom of the Spree was to do the mischief, and the exact details of the plan as to time and means were to be discussed and settled at a forthcoming meeting of some of the more reckless men of the party.
A very little ingenuity succeeded in extracting from him the place of the meeting--a house on the riverside which had been taken by them, ostensibly for some business purposes. But the time of the meeting he did not appear to know.