he furniture of
the room. At the window hung faded woollen curtains, and on the green
painted walls some pictures and portraits, conspicuous among them a
beautiful portrait of the king, painted on copper, which represented
Frederick in his youthful beauty. It was a morose, sullen-looking room,
arranged most certainly by its feminine occupant, and harmonized exactly
with her fretful face and angular figure, void of charms. At last the
general broke the silence with submissive voice: "I pray you, Clotilda,
tell me what the king wrote."

She folded the paper, joy beaming in her eyes. "Granted! every thing
granted!"

The general jumped up to embrace his wife with youthful activity, in
spite of the gout. "You are a capital wife," he cried, at the same time
giving her a loud, smacking kiss upon her cold, gray cheek. "It was the
brightest, cleverest act of my life marrying you, Clotilda."

"I might well say the reverse, Emerentius," she replied, complainingly.
"It surely was not sensible for me, a young lady from such a genteel
family, and so spoiled, to marry an officer whom the king ennobled upon
the battle-field, and who possessed nothing but his captain's pay--a
fickle man, and a gambler, too."

"Yes, Clotilda, love usurped reason," soothingly replied the general;
"love is your excuse."

"Nonsense!" cried Madame von Werrig. "Love is never an excuse; it is
folly."

"Well, let us suppose, then, that you did not marry for love, only from
pure reason, because you found that it was quite time to espouse some
one; and that, in spite of your many ancestors and genteel family, no
other chance was offered you, unfortunately no one but this captain,
whom the king ennobled upon the battle-field of Leuthen on account of
his bravery, and who was a very handsome, agreeable officer, expecting
still further promotion. And you were not deceived. I was major, when
the Hubertsburger treaty put an end to a gay war-life. You will remember
I was advanced during peace; his majesty did not forget that I cut a
way for him through the enemy, and he made me lieutenant-colonel and
colonel, when I was obliged to resign on account of this infamous gout,
and then I received the title of general."

"Without 'excellency,'" replied his wife, dryly. "I have not even
this pleasure to be called 'excellency.' It would have been a slight
compensation for my sad, miserable existence, and vexed many of
the female friends of my youth if they had been obli