The fifth act brings the necessary test.  The Elector is entreated on all sides to pardon the Prince; his family, the army, the Princess, all urge him, indeed the latter—­a fine touch—­repeats the offense of her lover.  On her own authority, she calls a regiment of which she is chief, to Fehrbellin, in order that the officers there may also sign their names to a petition which is being circulated, and thus she could, in her turn, actually be amenable to a court martial.  The Elector allows nothing to be wrung from him by coaxing or by bullying, but no one who has an idea of the structure of the play need tremble any longer for the Prince.  It can already be seen that the Elector has no intention of allowing matters to be carried to extremities from the leniency with which he is inclined to treat old Kottwitz, who has suddenly arrived with the cavalry, with out his knowledge and, as he believes, without his orders.  When Kottwitz presses him hard, and heatedly assures him that at the very first opportunity he will repeat the act of the Prince, which he once condemned but now must approve,—­since for one case where the impulse of the heart, the sudden instinct, does harm, there are ten in which it alone can lead to the goal,—­the Elector answers that lie does not know how to convince him, but he will call an advocate who is able to teach the old gentleman better than he can what discipline and obedience are.  Then he sends for the Prince, and the latter, solemnly and of his own accord, declares before the entire body of generals that he wishes by a voluntary death to glorify the code of war, which he had criminally violated in the sight of the whole army, and that the only favor he asks of the Elector, to whose just sentence he bows unconditionally, is that he will not try, on behalf of the King of Sweden, to force Nathalie’s inclinations.  This is granted him and he returns to prison, which he leaves immediately after, to start, with bandaged eyes, on the way which he perforce must think his last, and in the moment when he expects the end he deservedly receives from the hands of the Elector his life, his freedom, and his love.

Of course the romantic accessories of the first act have an unsatisfactory sequel in the last, as the poet here too feels obliged to take a roundabout road instead of the direct one.  But we surely do not need to prove thus late that the fault is quite as immaterial here as there.

It is without doubt obvious to every one that in this drama the evolution of an important man is presented with absolute directness, in a way in which it is done nowhere else; that we gaze into the characteristic medley of rough forces and wild impulses which as a rule are the original ingredients of such a man, and that we accompany him from the lowest stage up to the zenith, where the unrestrained roving comet, that in its disorderliness was exposed to the danger of self-destruction, is transformed into a clear self-dependent