“Crime, your highness?”

“Yes, count, crime!  You are a conspirator, a rebel!  You incited my officers to revolt, entangled them in a conspiracy, and when I would have brought you to judgment you fled like a cowardly woman.”

“Your highness!” screamed the count, “I beseech you, weigh your words, provoke me not too much!  Otherwise I might forget the respect due you.”

“And if you should venture, I have ample means of leading you back to the proper bounds, of forcing you to respect me, to fall down in the dust, and plead for pardon!  Do you know what you are?  Do you know what you were?”

“What I was I know,” cried the count.  “I was the favored lover of your sister, Princess Charlotte Louise!”

“Ah!  Now at last you drop your mask, now you show your real face.  The face of a slanderer, a liar!  For you utter a falsehood.  You calumniate the virtue of a noble lady, and boast of a favor you never received.”

“I speak the truth, your highness, and am in a condition to prove it.  Princess Charlotte Louise gave me her favor, and went further than was seemly for a modest maiden.  She volunteered to grant me a rendezvous impelled by ardent love.”

“That is not true.”

“It is true, sir, and I can prove it!  I have the writing with me, in which your sister invites me to a rendezvous in the castle at Berlin.  She wrote it with her own hand, and signed it with her name.  Until now, no one has known the secret, and no one shall know it if we can agree.”

“We agree?”

“Yes, your highness, we!  Your sister’s letter is well worth what I ask.  I demand nothing but my rights.  Leave me my estates, acknowledge me as grand master, appoint me my father’s successor, give me the hand of Princess Charlotte Louise.”

“My sister’s hand to you?”

“To me, for I have a right to that hand.  The Princess engaged herself to me, and granted me favors.”

“Wretched man, to boast of them!” interrupted the Elector.

“She appointed a meeting with me to take place by night,” continued the count quietly.  “Your honor would be destroyed if any one knew of this.  Let me keep it intact!  Give me your sister’s hand!  For I tell you if you do not the world shall hear of this faux pas on the part of the Princess.  I shall publicly expose the letter she wrote to me, and a laugh of scorn will pursue both you and her through the whole of Germany!  Give me your sister’s hand!”

“Were you the Emperor himself I would not give her to you.  And if you were in a position to defame my whole house, I would not give her to you!  And were my sister to fall at my feet weeping at my refusal, I would not give her to you!  Yes, and if I knew that my lands and wealth would be doubled by this marriage, I would never give my sister to you!  I asked you just now if you knew what you were and what you are.  To the first question you replied that you were my sister’s lover.  Now I will tell you what you are:  you are the son of a poisoner and a murderer!”