"
"I had the honor to recognize your highness when you were yet in the
boat, and I stood on the shore," said Count Munster, smiling and
bowing respectfully.
"And why did you not tell me so?" asked the duke, eagerly.
"Because I respected your incognito, your highness," said the count.
The duke shook his head, which was covered with dark, curly hair.
"No etiquette, count," he said, almost indignantly. "I am nothing
but a poor soldier, who scarcely knows where to lay his head, whom
grief is tormenting, and whose hunger for vengeance is not
appeased."
"There will be a time when all those who are hungry, like your
highness, will be satisfied," said Justus Gruner, solemnly.
"If you speak the truth, my friend," exclaimed the duke, with
emphasis, "the eyes of my blind father, who died in despair, will
reopen, and he will look down with blissful tears upon the delivered
world. And they will blot out his last dying words, that are burning
like fire in my heart. 'Oh, what a disgrace! what a disgrace!' were
the last words my father uttered. I hear them night and day; they
are always resounding in my ears like the death-knell of Germany;
they are ever smarting in my heart like an open wound. Germany is
groaning and lamenting, for Napoleon's foot is still on her neck,
and, mortally wounded and blinded like my father, we are all crying,
'Oh, what a disgrace! what a disgrace!'"
"But the time will soon come when our wounds will heal," said Count
Munster, gravely.
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