t must be
granted, annul the conditions attendant upon it."

"I do not understand you," answered the king, harshly. "Speak not in
riddles. What do you mean?"

"General Werrig von Leuthen has addressed himself to you, sire, praying
for the consent of your majesty to the marriage of his daughter with
the banker Ebenstreit. Your majesty has consented, and added that Herr
Ebenstreit shall take the name of his future father-in-law, and the
marriage shall take place as soon as the title of nobility has been made
out."

The king nodded. "For which the new-made nobleman has to pay a hundred
louis d'ors to the Invalids at Berlin. But what is that to you? And what
connection has Herr Ebenstreit's title to do with Conrector Moritz?"

Moritz's face brightened, and, deeply moved, he answered: "Sire, I love
the daughter of General von Leuthen, and she returns my love. By not
ennobling Ebenstreit, it lies in your power, most gracious majesty, to
make two persons the most blessed of God's creatures, who desire nothing
more than to wander hand in hand through life, loving and trusting each
other."

"Is that all?" asked the king, with a searching glance.

Moritz quailed beneath it, and cast down his eyes. "No!" he replied.
"As I now stand in the presence of your majesty, I am sensible of the
boldness of my undertaking, and words fail me to express what is burning
in my soul. Oh! sire, I only know that we love each other, and that this
love is the first sunbeam which has fallen upon my gloomy and thorny
path of life, and awakened in my lonely heart all the bloom of feeling.
You smile, and your great spirit may well mock the poor human being
who thinks of personal happiness, when for an idea merely thousands are
killed upon the field of battle. My life, sire, has been a great combat,
in which I have striven with all the demons escaped from Pandora's box.
I have grown up amid privations and need. I have lived and suffered,
until God recompensed my joyless, toiling, hungered existence by this
reciprocated love, which is a beautiful ornament to my life, and is life
itself, and to renounce it would be to renounce life. I am young, sire,
and I long for the unknown paradise of earthly happiness, which I have
never entered until now, and which I can only attain led by the hand of
my beloved. I yearn just once, as other privileged men, to bask in the
sunshine of happiness a long, beautiful summer day, and then at the
golden sunset to sink u