“I heard, but your honor knows that I can not go.  Your lordship well knows that from your lips I await the sentence which is to seal my whole future fate, and that I will not leave this room until I have received this.”

“How?  You will not leave this room.  You will stay although I have bidden you go?  Very well, then, I shall call my servants and have you put out.”

And already the count’s hand was stretched forth to take his silver whistle.  But Gabriel Nietzel dared to grasp this hand and hold it firmly between both his own.

“Pity, gracious sir, pity!” he pleaded.  “Drive me from your presence, take from me the pension you most condescendingly insured to me; I feel that I am indeed undeserving of your favor and graciousness.  Only, for pity’s sake, for humanity’s sake, restore to me my own—­give me my wife and child!”

“What have I to do with your wife and child?” asked Count Schwarzenberg angrily.  “Have you handed them over to me?  Am I the chief of an asylum for deserted women and children?”

“My wife, Sir Count, give me back my wife!” cried Gabriel Nietzel, sinking down upon his knees.

“I know nothing about her, I have never seen her,” said the count.

“You do know about her, your excellency!  You took her and my dear, precious child under your protection when I went to The Hague.  You had my wife and child carried to, Spandow, and gave them an abode within your palace there.”

“Now I see plainly that you speak like a deranged man, Master Gabriel Nietzel,” cried the count passionately.  “Collect your faculties, man, or I shall immediately have you arrested and sent to a madhouse.  I repeat, collect your faculties, and utter not such palpably idle tales.  Very likely that I should have taken your wife and child into my keeping.  Bethink yourself, Master Gabriel Nietzel, be rational, and remember that you are happily unincumbered and a free bachelor!”

“No, no, I am not free!” shrieked Gabriel Nietzel.  “I have a wife, I have a child, and see them again I must!  Deliver them up to me, Sir Count.  I beseech you by all that is sacred—­deliver them up to me!  I must have my wife and boy again!”

“Well then, go and look for them,” said Schwarzenberg composedly “Apply to the police, and furnish them with a description of both their persons.  Show your marriage license and your child’s certificate of baptism, that every one may be convinced of the truth of your deposition.  Then write a description of your wife, or, as you are a painter, draw a likeness of her, publish her name and family, call upon her relatives to render you their assistance, and in that way, if you really have a wife, you will in the end succeed in discovering her.”

“Sir Count, you well know that I can not do so,” groaned Gabriel Nietzel.  “You well know that I am a poor, ruined man, entirely in your power.  I beseech you, have mercy upon me!  Restore to me my wife and child, and I will do all that you require of me.  Give me back my wife, and I swear to you that I will do here what I was to have done on the journey.  I swear to you that I will make good what I missed, that I—­”