"You will not understand me, your highness," cried the colonel impatiently, and his red swollen face glowed with a brighter hue. "But I must still try to make you understand, for to that very end have I been sent hither by your friends; they have chosen me as spokesman for them all, and therefore I must speak, if your highness will grant me leave so to do." "Speak, my dear colonel, speak, and may God enlighten my heart, that I may rightly understand you! Let us sit down, colonel, and now let us hear what is the matter." "This is the matter, your highness, the Mark of Brandenburg is lost to you, if you do not seize it now with swift, determined hand. You do not believe me, sir; you shake your head incredulously and smile. Ah! I see plainly, that you have been suffered to remain in great darkness as regards the situation of affairs here, and you know very little of our sufferings and our distresses. You know not that poverty and want prevail throughout the whole land; that the peasant, the burgher, the nobleman, all classes of the people, in short, are equally oppressed; that trade and commerce lie prostrate; and the aim of each one is only how he may prolong a wretched existence from day to day." "Nevertheless, my dear colonel, I know that. I saw enough solitary, ruined villages, waste and empty towns, uncultivated and ravaged fields on my journey hither to prove to me what the poor inhabitants of the Mark have had to suffer in these evil days of war." "Have had to suffer, says your highness?" cried Burgsdorf impatiently; "they still suffer continuously, and their suffering will be without cessation or end if your highness does not take pity upon the poor people, upon us all." "I?" asked Frederick William, astonished. "What then can I do?" "You can do everything, my Prince, everything, and in the name of your future country, in the name of your subjects, I beseech you to do so. The Mark Brandenburg stands upon the brink of a precipice. Save it, Electoral Prince. The religion, policy, and independence of Brandenburg are in danger; take your sword in hand and save her. Speak three words, three little insignificant words, and all the noblemen in the Mark will rally exultingly about you, and the people will flock to you in crowds, and make you so mighty and so strong that you need only to will and your will shall be executed." "What three words are those, Sir Colonel von Burgsdorf?" "Those three words, your highness, which the people shouted up at the palace window yesterday, when you got home. The three words, 'Down with him!'" "Down with _him_," repeated the Electoral Prince. "And who is this _him_?"