He can be as severe as his father, cruel and inexorable as he.
"Doris Ritter! Thy fate haunts me.

On the morrow I also may be whipped through the streets, scorned, reviled by the rabble, and then sent to Spandau as a criminal.

Did not the king threaten me with the house of correction, with the spinning-wheel, which he would have ready for me ?" At the thought of it a terrible anguish, a nameless despair, seized her.

She felt that the spinning-wheel hung over her like the sword of Damocles, ready at the least occasion to fall upon her, and bind her to it.

She felt that she could not endure such suspense and torture; she must escape; she must rescue herself from the king's anger.
"But whither, whither! I must fly from here, from his immediate proximity, where a motion of his finger is sufficient to seize me, to cause me to disappear before the prince could have any knowledge of it, before he could know of the danger which threatened me.