"Are you the young Count Laniska?" said an officer to him, the moment he appeared.
"I _am_ the young Count Laniska," replied he, in a firm tone. "What do you want with me? and why this disturbance in my mother's house at this unseasonable hour?"
"We come here by the king's orders," replied the soldier. "Is not there in this house a woman of the name of Sophia Mansfeld?"
"Yes," replied Laniska: "what do you want with her?"
"She must come with us; and you are our prisoner, count," replied the soldier.
It was in vain to ask for further explanation. The soldiers could give none; they knew nothing, but that their orders were to convey Sophia Mansfeld immediately to Meissen in Saxony, and to lodge Count Laniska in the castle of Spandau, a state prison.
"I must know my crime before I submit to punishment," cried Laniska, in a passionate voice; but he restrained the natural violence of his temper, on seeing his mother appear, and, at her request, yielded himself up a prisoner without resistance, and without a murmur. "I depend on your innocence, my son, and on the justice of the king," said the countess; and she took leave of him without shedding a tear. The next day, even before the king arrived at Potzdam, she went to the palace, determined to wait there till she could see him, that she might hear from his own lips the cause of her son's imprisonment. She waited a considerable time--for, without alighting from horseback, Frederick proceeded to the parade, where he was occupied for some hours; at length he alighted, and the first person he saw, on entering his palace, was the Countess Laniska.
"I am willing to believe, madam," said he, "that you have no share in your son's folly and ingratitude."
"My son is, I hope, incapable of ingratitude, sir," answered the countess, with an air of placid dignity. "I am well aware that he may have been guilty of great imprudence."
"At six o'clock this evening let me see you, madam," replied the king, "at Sans Souci, in the gallery of paintings, and you shall know of what your son is accused."
At the appointed hour she was in the gallery of paintings at Sans Souci. No one was there. She waited quietly for some time, then walked up and down the gallery with extreme impatience and agitation; at last, she heard the king's voice and his step; the door opened, and Frederick appeared. It was an awful moment to the mother of Laniska. She stood in silent expectation.