With me lies freedom, life, happiness! I will take you
away and show you the great world, and when you are once in it, you will
learn to breathe freely and enjoy life, as one redeemed from slavery. I
know what it is to be liberated from slavery. I, too, wore the chains
which, in an hour of foolish fascination, I forged for myself, but I
should have torn them apart in the first year had it not been for my
unborn child. O, freedom is sweet, as you will soon learn."
She knew only too well the words to choose to accomplish her purpose.
Freedom, life, happiness. They signified so much. They echoed and
re-echoed in the heart of the boy, whose longing for freedom had always
been repressed by a powerful hand. Now like a picture from a magician's
hand, the fairy-like visions of promised liberty stood before him. He
need but stretch out his hand and it was his own.
"My word," he murmured with a last feeble attempt to rescue himself. "My
father will despise me--"
"When you have attained to a great, proud future," Zalika interrupted
him excitedly, "then go to your father and ask him if he dares to
despise you; he would bind you to the earth, but you have wings to fly
above it. He does not understand a nature like yours, and never will.
Will you destroy yourself for the sake of a mere word and be a slave
forever? Come with me, Hartmut, with me to whom you are all the world.
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