original coloring and interwoven sickly streaks of yellow.  The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet.  No one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and, long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, no preparations whatever had been made for his reception.  Four years had passed over these chambers without leaving any further trace of their presence than dust and cobwebs, and faded stripes on cushion and curtain.  Sighing, the Electoral Prince threw himself into one of the two armchairs.  The old piece of furniture creaked under him, as if by this sound it would greet him and remind him of the past.  He leaned his head against the back, whose leather cooled his temples as if a cold hand had been laid upon the brow of him who had just come home.  Slowly his glance swept through the room, and it seemed to him as if he saw the four last years glide by like phantom shapes through the lonely, dreary, and dusty chamber.  They looked at him with wan smiles and lusterless eyes, and hovered past shadowlike, leaving behind for him nothing but dust, nothing but a hardly cicatrized wound.  Hardly cicatrized!

Sometimes it bled yet, this wound of his past.  Sometimes he thought that there was no healing for it, that it would never close, and that its pain would never cease.

Just so thought he as the shadows of the four years floated by him through that gloomy, dusty room.  Just so thought he, when the youngest of these phantoms paused beside him, threw back her gray veil of mist, and under it disclosed to him a beautiful, rosy female face, with flaming eyes, pouting lips, and lovely smile, when she raised her hand and beckoned to him, whispering:  “Leave all behind and come to me! I am waiting for you! I love you!  Oh, come to me!”

How sweetly enticing were these whispered sounds, how burning was the pain in the wound but barely healed!  Again it began to bleed, again tears rose to his eyes.  He was not ashamed of them, and yet, as he felt them flow burning down his cheeks, he stretched out his hands deprecatingly to the phantom with the rosy cheeks and fascinating smile, to the shadow of the last year, and murmured:  “Away from me!  Come not near me, to tempt my heart!  I may not follow you—­I may not, and I will not.”

“And I will not!” he repeated quite aloud, and jumped up from his easychair, shaking his head defiantly and proudly, like a roused lion.

“What will you not?” asked a soft voice behind him, and when he turned round he saw at his back Baron von Leuchtmar, who had just entered, and whose mild, gentle glances rested upon him with tender expression.

“Leuchtmar!” cried the Prince, hastening to meet him with both hands outstretched.  “God be praised, that you are here, that you come to me at this moment!  Ah! would that you had not left me at Spandow, but had remained at my side!”