Prince Feodor felt annihilated, and staggered back as if struck by an electric shock.  “Elise! is this the way you reward my love?” asked he sadly, after a pause.  “Is this the troth you plighted me?”

She stepped up close to him, and said softly:  “I kept my heart faithful to my Feodor, but he ceded it to Prince Stratimojeff.  Elise is too proud to be the wife of a man who owes his title of prince to the fact of being the favorite of an empress.”

She turned and was about to leave the room, but Feodor held her back.  No reserve, no concealment were any longer possible to him.  He only felt that he was infinitely wretched, and that he had lost the hope of his life.  “Elise,” he said, in that soft, sad tone, which had formerly charmed her heart, “I came to you to save me; you have thrust me back into an abyss.  Like a drowning man I stretched out my hand to you, that in your arms I might live a new life.  But Fate is just.  It hunts me back pitilessly from this refuge, and I must and will sink.  Well, then, though the waves of life close over me, my last utterance will be your name.”

Elise found herself capable of the cruel courage of listening to his pathetic words with a smile:  “You will yet have time to think over your death,” said she, with proud composure; and, turning to her father, she continued, “My business with this gentleman is finished.  Now, father, begin yours.”  She gave her hand to Bertram, and, without honoring the prince with another look, she left the room with her betrothed.

“And now,” said Gotzkowsky coldly, “now, sir, let us proceed to our affairs.  Will you have the kindness to follow me to my counting-room?  You have come to Berlin to rob me of my daughter and my property!  You have been unsuccessful in the one; try now the other.”

“That I will, that I shall!” cried the prince, gnashing his teeth, and anger flashing from his eyes.  “Elise has been pitiless, I will be so too.”

“And I would hurl your pity from me as an insult,” said Gotzkowsky, “if you offered it.”

“We are then enemies, for life and death—­”

“Oh, no!  We are two tradesmen who bargain and haggle with each other about the profits.  There is nothing more between us.”  He opened the door and called in his secretary and his cashier.  “This gentleman,” said Gotzkowsky, with cutting coldness, “is the agent of Russia, sent here to negotiate with me, and in case I cannot pay, to adopt the most severe measures toward me.  You, gentlemen, will transact this business with him.  You have the necessary instructions.”  He then turned to the prince, who stood breathless and trembling from inward excitement, burning with anger and pain, and leaning against the wall to keep himself from falling.  “Prince,” said he, “you will be paid.  Take these thirty thousand dollars; they are the fortune of my son-in-law.  He has given it cheerfully to release us from you.  Here, further, are my daughter’s diamonds.  Take them to your empress as a fit memorial of your German deeds, and my pictures will cover the balance of my indebtedness to you."[1]