“This is the matter, your highness, the Mark of Brandenburg is lost to you, if you do not seize it now with swift, determined hand.  You do not believe me, sir; you shake your head incredulously and smile.  Ah!  I see plainly, that you have been suffered to remain in great darkness as regards the situation of affairs here, and you know very little of our sufferings and our distresses.  You know not that poverty and want prevail throughout the whole land; that the peasant, the burgher, the nobleman, all classes of the people, in short, are equally oppressed; that trade and commerce lie prostrate; and the aim of each one is only how he may prolong a wretched existence from day to day.”

“Nevertheless, my dear colonel, I know that.  I saw enough solitary, ruined villages, waste and empty towns, uncultivated and ravaged fields on my journey hither to prove to me what the poor inhabitants of the Mark have had to suffer in these evil days of war.”

“Have had to suffer, says your highness?” cried Burgsdorf impatiently; “they still suffer continuously, and their suffering will be without cessation or end if your highness does not take pity upon the poor people, upon us all.”

“I?” asked Frederick William, astonished.  “What then can I do?”

“You can do everything, my Prince, everything, and in the name of your future country, in the name of your subjects, I beseech you to do so.  The Mark Brandenburg stands upon the brink of a precipice.  Save it, Electoral Prince.  The religion, policy, and independence of Brandenburg are in danger; take your sword in hand and save her.  Speak three words, three little insignificant words, and all the noblemen in the Mark will rally exultingly about you, and the people will flock to you in crowds, and make you so mighty and so strong that you need only to will and your will shall be executed.”

“What three words are those, Sir Colonel von Burgsdorf?”

“Those three words, your highness, which the people shouted up at the palace window yesterday, when you got home.  The three words, ’Down with him!’”

“Down with him,” repeated the Electoral Prince.  “And who is this him?”

“It is Count Schwarzenberg, your highness—­it is the minister who rules here in the Mark as if it were his own property, and as if he were not your father’s Stadtholder, but the reigning Prince, who had obtained the Mark as a fief from the Emperor of Germany, to whom alone he were responsible.  Look about you, Frederick William, look at these poor, wretched apartments, in which you live—­look at the decay of the princely house, the embarrassments with which your father has to contend, and the privations which your mother and sisters have to undergo.  And then, Prince, then look across at Broad Street, at Count Schwarzenberg’s palace.  There all is glory and splendor, there are to be seen lackeys in golden liveries, costly equipages, handsomely furnished