"
Then the hand of the speaker turned the round handle of the brass
door, and the fainting soul of the poor little prisoner within
grew sick with fear.
The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, some one bent
down and looked in, and the same voice that he had heard in praise
of its beauty called aloud, in surprise: "What is this in it? A
live child!"
Then August, terrified beyond all self-control, and dominated by
one master-passion, sprang out of the body of the stove and fell
at the feet of the speaker.
"Oh, let me stay! Pray, meinherr, let me stay!" he sobbed. "I have
come all the way with Hirschvogel!"
Some gentlemen's hands seized him, not gently by any means, and
their lips angrily muttered in his ear, "Little knave, peace! be
quiet! hold your tongue! It is the king!"
They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he
had been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, but
the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents,
"Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speak to
me."
The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely against
their wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let August slide
out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough
sheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling
hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber
he had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a
beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and the
young man said to him:--
"My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be not afraid:
tell me the truth.
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