Chapter XX: The Honor of a Lady-In-Waiting

Dick recalled now his collision with the fallen body of Mesmer, and the general tumble that had ensued in the tower, and he remembered having noticed previously the bright color of the Count's cloak. "Doubtless the Count got mine or some one's else, in the scramble, and so no one is robbed," thought Dick.

He foresaw that he would be speedily pursued towards Melsungen. He had not lived in the wilderness of Pennsylvania to be at a disadvantage in the neighborhood of a German forest, nor had he learned the ways of the American Indians for nothing. So he very soon rode into the woods at the left, and, having penetrated to some distance from the road, deliberately turned northward towards the ruined tower, deeming that to be the safest place for him to hide while considering the situation. The captured conspirators once removed from it, the tower would have been left unguarded, and yet no one would suppose that he would return at once to a place where he had recently stood in such great danger.

Riding on through the forest, he reached an eminence, from which the descent on the northeastern side was abrupt and steep. Here, over the tops of trees that were rooted where the precipice began to be less steep, he got a view of the country lying east and north, small parts of which country were clear of woods. Through one of these open spaces, directly east, a procession of troops, some mounted, some on foot, was moving towards the southeast. Dick's heart fell at the sight, although he could have expected nothing better. It was the march of his captured comrades, under an escort of remounted horse-guards and of a company of foot, to the prison-fortress of Spangenberg. He counted the prisoners, whom he could easily distinguish from their guards. All who had met in the tower that afternoon were there but himself. So Gerard must be among them. How, Dick asked himself, could their plot have been discovered?

And now he looked northward, towards the tower, which the prisoners must have left about two hours before. He could make out its dark, round, stone top in the midst of the thick copse. While he was gazing at it, he saw two figures on horseback emerge from the copse and proceed across a clear space towards that part of the forest where the hunt had been in progress. One figure, stout and erect, Dick instantly knew to be the Landgrave's; the other, so completely cloaked as to be unrecognizable by any lines of shape, was that of a woman. The two soon entered the farther woods by a narrow bridle-path, and were lost to view.

"An assignation," thought Dick. "No sooner does the Landgrave clear the tower of conspirators than he uses it for a purpose of his own. To-day's hunt is remarkable for the number of people who have slipped away from it."

He now pressed on to the tower. At some rods from it, he dismounted and tied his horse. He then advanced cautiously, to make sure that the place was deserted. Suddenly he stopped, at sound of a furious gallop on the road from Cassel to Melsungen. While he listened, the horse's footfalls came to an abrupt stop. After a few minutes of silence, there arose the sound of some one treading crisp leaves, and forcing a way through underbrush. Dick grasped his sword and waited, knowing he would have to face but one person,--for the galloping had been of a solitary horse. The newcomer soon appeared on foot, among the trees. It was Captain von Romberg, in great excitement and alarm.

"You are still here!" he gasped, seizing Dick's hand. "Thank God, I am in time!"

"In time for what?" asked Dick.

"In time to save you and our comrades. Come, the others are in the tower, are they not?"

"The others are on their way, under a guard, to Spangenberg."

"My God! Then I am too late! I thought I might give a half-hour's warning! We have been betrayed!"

"So it is evident. What do you know of it? Come, my dear Count, sit here on this log, and tell me."

The two sat down together at one side of the doorway, outside the tower.

"I got word from--a certain lady," began Von Romberg, in a half breathless, heart-broken voice, "to come to her at once, as she was suddenly at the point of death. This was a short time before I was to have started for the meeting this afternoon. When I entered her room I found her perfectly well, but in great trepidation. She said I must not leave her house till night. When I insisted on going, now that I had found she was not ill, she broke down, and told me everything. You must know she is the--she is on close terms with the secretary of Rothenstein, minister of police. Through this secretary she had learned that we have all been terribly tricked. Our conspiracy was instigated with the Landgrave's own authority! It was an idea of old Rothenstein's, and the villain who carried it out was Mesmer!"

"But,--I don't understand. Why should the Landgrave authorize a conspiracy against himself?"

"In order to have a reason, in the eyes of his subjects and of other powers, for removing certain objectionable persons from his way. You are an Englishman, St. Valier a Frenchman. Without a good pretext he would not dare have you two imprisoned, lest your governments might call him to account. Moreover, if he took any arbitrary step against yourself, the people might think he was secretly angry at you for having saved the Landgravine's life. And then, this woman told me, there is a lady whose hatred the Landgrave does not wish to incur, and he would incur it by causing your destruction; but now it will appear that you have brought destruction on yourself by plotting high treason."

"What a diabolical scheme!"

"You see, my dear Wetheral, we, who have supposed ourselves to be conspirators, are the ones who have really been conspired against. All was perfectly arranged. Even the choice of officers by lot was so managed by Mesmer, who conducted the drawing, that you and St. Valier were designated."

"The base-hearted Landgrave would remove both her protectors! But what proof will there be against us, beyond Mesmer's testimony? And will not Mesmer's testimony betray the Landgrave's whole design?"

"Mesmer will give no testimony. They have proof sufficient, of the kind they desire. This very afternoon they found the signed compact in your room; they knew from Mesmer exactly where it was hidden. Mesmer will not even appear among the accused. It was part of the plan that he should be allowed to escape, and to stay out of the country till the others were disposed of. To that escape and absence, the rest of us would attribute his not being punished with us,--and not to his having sold us to the Landgrave. Thus the world was to be kept from knowing the despicable part this wretch had played. And now mark how little these villains trust one another. Fearful, I suppose, lest the Landgrave would after all let him suffer, in order to make sure of his silence, Mesmer stipulated that he should be allowed to escape at the moment of arrest. Mesmer once inside a prison, he doubtless thought, the Landgrave might consider a dungeon--or a grave--the safest place for a man who possessed the secret of so detestable a transaction. And, to keep his treachery the more hidden, he provided that the arrest and his apparent escape should be entrusted to an officer not acquainted with him."

"But how then could the officer know which man was to escape?"

"Mesmer was to be distinguished by a cloak of a particular color," said Romberg.

"The devil!" cried Dick, smiling despite all circumstances. "And the cloak happened to be on me at the time of the escape."

"Listen!" said Romberg, abruptly. "Some one is coming."

The sounds of an approach were indeed heard from the side towards the depths of the forest. The two gentlemen rose, and grasped their swords. A moment later a man stepped into view, whom they both recognized by sight. He was a French valet of the Landgrave's.

"Pardon, messieurs!" he exclaimed, after a start of fright at so suddenly coming upon the two threatening-looking gentlemen. "I have come here merely to look for a riding-whip dropped by Mademoiselle de St. Valier a short time ago." And he stepped into the tower, where he began to search with his feet the paving, which was in comparative darkness.

For a moment Dick's heart was stilled. The blood left his cheeks; power left his voice. He followed the valet in. "Do you mean to say that Mademoiselle de St. Valier was here in this tower a short while ago?" he asked, in a forced voice, when he could speak at all. He remembered the cloaked lady riding from the copse with the Landgrave.

"Yes, monsieur," replied the lackey, adding in a significant tone, "and in very excellent company. Ah, here is the whip, and very far back in the tower, too."

"You rascal!" cried Dick, his energy returning with vehemence, and seized the valet by arm and neck. "Do you dare say that Mademoiselle de St. Valier was in this tower alone with the Landgrave? Come into the light, you miserable cur, that I may see the lie on your villainous face!" And Dick dragged the fellow from the tower.

"Let me go, monsieur!" whimpered the lackey, wriggling in terror. "_Mon Dieu_, is it the fault of a poor servant if a lady-in-waiting allows herself to be seduced by the Landgrave? Don't make an honest man pay for the sins of a prince's harlot!"

"My God, Romberg, do you hear that?" cried Dick, throwing the valet to the ground. "And do you _see_ that?" he added, picking up the whip, of which he now recognized the curiously formed handle, though his last sight of it had been on that New Jersey road where, three years and a half ago, he had volunteered to recover her stolen miniature.

Von Romberg, who had begun to understand the situation in a general way, shook his head sadly, and said, with quiet tenderness, "We must not expect too much of the sex, my friend."

Dick sank down on the log, dropping the whip, and began to weep like a child. The wild suspicion had seized him that Catherine might have favored the prospective marriage to himself either as a cloak for a liaison with the Landgrave or as a refuge on the possible termination of such liaison. The valet, making no attempt to recover the whip, now used his opportunity to rise and dash off through the woods.

Suddenly Dick started up, and faced his kindly, pitying friend.

"I will find out!" he cried. "The thing is too damnable for belief. I'll not hold a woman guilty till I've seen with my own eyes, or heard from her own lips. I will go to her as fast as my horse can carry me!"

"But," said Romberg, in great alarm, grasping him with strong arms around the body, "is she in Cassel?"

"She is in the palace. Don't delay me, Romberg, for God's sake!"

"But they will arrest you. You are guilty of high treason, man. They are doubtless searching for you now. It is madness and suicide to go to the palace. My friend, would you throw yourself into the Landgrave's hands?" For Dick, exerting all his strength, was violently getting the better of Romberg's hindering embrace.

"I would learn the truth!" he cried. "If that lackey lied, I shall either escape again or be content to die. I would rather die and know her pure, than live forever and doubt her honor." And, hurling Romberg away from him, he was free.

"And what if you find the story true?" called Romberg after him, in a voice of sympathetic dismay.

"I will kill the Landgrave!" cried Dick, and bounded through the bushes, towards his horse.

* * * * *

Late that night Catherine de St. Valier sat in her apartment in the palace, accompanied only by one of the inferior attendants, a girl named Gretel, who was devoted to her. At one side of the chamber a pair of curtains concealed the alcove in which the bed was. At the other side was a door communicating with a corridor. The chamber window overlooked, at some height, an open space--a kind of small park--at the rear of the palace. Outside the window was a little balcony, and not far away was one of a few tall trees that grew in the small park. On a dressing-table was a candelabrum, with but one of its branches lighted, so that the interior of the room was dim to the sight. The night had recently clouded over, and only at intervals could the moon be seen through the dark window.

Catherine sat on a small couch, her face as pale as death, gazing at the opposite wall with wide-open eyes, in which grief and horror had given way to a kind of trance-like stupor. Now and then she would give a slight start, and a tremor would pass through her body, which was attired in a loose white gown lightly confined at the waist. At such moments she would turn her eyes furtively towards the door leading from the corridor. Near this door sat the maid, Gretel, silently watching with pitying eyes the half dead lady-in-waiting.

Suddenly the window, which was made of two casements running each from top to bottom, was flung rudely open, and in from the balcony stepped a man, who immediately stood still and looked around until his eyes fell on Catherine.

She rose quickly to her feet, and, with bowed head, said, in a low and lifeless voice:

"You find me waiting, your highness."

"Highness!" echoed the intruder. "Then you did expect him. It is true. My God!"

She gazed at him like a woman struck dumb with astonishment, then staggered to the dressing-table, took up the candle, and moved swiftly towards him, holding the light so as to illumine his face.

"It is his spirit," she whispered, having made sure that the features were those of Wetheral. The girl, Gretel, now gently took the light from Catherine's hand, lest Catherine might, in her half swooning condition, drop it, and replaced it on the dressing-table.

"It is no spirit, mademoiselle," said Dick, in a broken voice, "but a living man who might better be dead, for his last hope is killed, his faith crushed, his heart torn with misery! Oh, my God, my God! Oh, Catherine, Catherine!" And he fell prostrate on the couch, hiding his weeping eyes upon his arm, and yielding his body to be shaken by sobs.

Catherine stood looking at him, while her bewildered ideas approached a definite shape. But, before she could speak, he sprang to his feet, his grief having been succeeded by a wave of fierce and bitter reproach.

"So I was right when I called you faithless before the whole assembly that night!" he cried. "So you have fooled me from the first! Oh, was there ever such cunning? How I have been deceived by your guileless air, your innocent face, the truthful look of your eyes! Great God, is anything to be trusted in this world, when a woman who seems so pure and noble proves to be not only the harlot of a prince but the lying betrayer of an honest man, who loves her with all his soul? Why have you nothing to say?" he demanded, with a fresh access of rage. "Haven't you the grace to defend yourself? Oh, for God's sake, deceive me again! Lie to me, and I will believe you. Let me have any reason, even the smallest, to delude myself with the fancy that you are still mine. Deny these accusations! Deny that you expected the Landgrave here to-night."

"I cannot deny what is true," she said, quietly and sadly.

"Oh, you admit it!" he cried, wounded and enraged beyond all control. "You brazen Jezebel, I will kill you!" He grasped her by the neck, and, as she yielded instantly to his movement, forced her to her knees. As he made to clutch her throat she threw back her head, disclosing the white and delicate skin on which he formerly would not have inflicted the tiniest scratch for the world. "Oh, I cannot," he sobbed, pressing his lips against the tender throat, and breaking down completely. "Oh, Catherine, Catherine!" He raised her, and stood with his arms enfolding her. But, after a moment, he released her and stepped back, saying, plaintively, "To think that you are not mine to embrace! To think that you are the Landgrave's!"

"The Landgrave's!" she echoed. "No, not yet the Landgrave's, for you are not dead, and I am still a living woman."

"What do you mean?" asked Dick, startled into a kind of wild hope.

"He told me you were dead,--that you had been shot while trying to escape--"

"Who told you, Catherine? What do you mean? Tell me, quickly." He took her hand, and made her sit beside him on the couch.

"The Landgrave told me,--and Von Rothenstein, and others who were there. You see, I was at the hunt, with the Landgravine. We all heard of the terrible conspiracy, and of the arrests; and, while we were talking about it in the forest, the prisoners were taken by, where we could see them all,--the conspirators, arrested for high treason. And one of them was Gerard, my brother Gerard."

"And the whole court saw them led past?"

"Yes, with Gerard, my dear brother. When I was told that these men were going to prison and would surely be put to death--oh, it was terrible to think of,--my brother, little Gerard, as we used to call him, my mother and I. _Mon Dieu_, I would give my life to save him, and so I rode in search of the Landgrave, to beg that he would save Gerard. Some of the officers told me where to find him,--in the tower where the conspirators had been caught. I went there, and begged him on my knees for Gerard's life. He sent away the Count von Rothenstein and the others who were there, and listened to me. At last he said there was a way in which I might save Gerard, though my brother was one of the officers of the band and deserved death even more than the others did. I said I would give my life to save Gerard's,--for I knew that you, my love, would not blame me for that. But the Landgrave said it was not my life he wished, it was--"

"I understand!"

"I would not consent to that, even to save my brother. When the Landgrave became more urgent, and began to speak of my duty as a sister, I said that what he asked was not mine to give, that I was pledged to another. And then he told me you were dead, that you had been shot while trying to escape when the conspirators were captured. For a time I could not speak. He called back the minister of police and the others, and asked them to assure me that you had been killed. When I could no longer doubt, something seemed to have died within me. I felt that I was no longer a living woman, that my life had gone out at the news that you were dead."

"My poor beloved!"

"Then the Landgrave sent away the others, and spoke again of Gerard, saying that one of whose treason there was so much proof would certainly be condemned, and that only an arbitrary order of the sovereign could cause him to be released. The thought came to me that it was no longer a living woman that the Landgrave demanded for my brother's life, that I was no more Catherine de St. Valier, and that if I should consent to save Gerard it would be giving the Landgrave not myself but a soulless corpse. Oh, do you not understand?"

"Yes, yes, _I_ understand. _I_ can imagine all you felt!"

"It was agreed that a messenger of the Landgrave should go with Antoine to Spangenberg, with everything necessary for Gerard's release and his flight to France. The Landgrave was not to present himself before me until he could bring proofs, with Antoine as an eye-witness, of Gerard's departure from Spangenberg. I was waiting for him when you came in by the window. So distracted I was, that, for the moment, I supposed the Landgrave had taken that way of entrance for the sake of greater secrecy."

"It was I, who, for the sake of secrecy, chose that way," said Dick. "I was shot at in escaping from the tower, but they were not my countrymen behind the muskets! I went back to the tower, and saw the Landgrave riding away, alone with a lady. While I was at the tower, a lackey came to seek the lady's riding-whip. When he said the lady was you, and when I saw it was your whip he found, I was mad with jealousy and doubt, grief and fear, and I should have died had I not come to find out the truth. A friend, who had tried to hold me back, followed and overtook me outside the city, persuaded me to enter Cassel with caution, and offered me his aid. We left our horses in the woods outside the city, obtained a boat from a peasant, rowed down the Fulda after dark, and thus got into Cassel without crossing the bridge or meeting the guard. Romberg waited at the river while I hastened to the palace. I had learned from Gerard which was your window,--and, thank God, one can approach it without passing near the guards at the palace doors. I climbed yonder tree--as I have climbed many a tree in America--and swung by a branch to the balcony." He had risen to point out the tree, and she had followed him.

"Thank God you came in time,--that I knew before it was too late!" she said, turning her eyes up to his with a grave and tender gaze.

"Thank God you still are mine!" he replied, clasping her again in his arms, and pressing a kiss upon her lips.

There came a cautious knock on the door. Catherine gave a start.

"The Landgrave," she whispered, "coming to the appointment!"

She gazed up at Dick, in questioning silence. Gretel, who evidently understood the situation, cast an inquiring look at Catherine, and stood as, if awaiting orders. No one in the room moved.

The knock was repeated. Dick had now made up his mind. "He brings proof of Gerard's safety?" he whispered, interrogatively.

"Yes, or he would not be here," replied Catherine, under her breath.

Dick motioned Gretel to come close to him. "Open the door, in a moment," he said to the girl, "but do it in a fumbling way, so as to delay him as long as possible." Dick then led Catherine quickly into the alcove, the curtains closing behind them.

There was a third knock, a little louder and more insistent. But Gretel could now be heard at the door, which she first locked and then unlocked, in order to carry out Dick's instructions. When she finally opened it, the Landgrave stepped swiftly in, retaining the noiseless tread he had used in the corridor. His triumphant, expectant face, when he saw only Gretel in the room, took on a look of sharp disappointment.

"The devil!" he said, in a kind of quick growl. "No one here?"

The maid, not knowing what to say, pretended to be absorbed in fastening the door, which she had promptly closed.

Noticing the curtained alcove, the Landgrave started towards it; but he had not crossed the room when Catherine appeared, instantly letting the curtains fall to behind her.

"At last, mademoiselle," said the Landgrave, joyfully, putting forth his hand to grasp her own.

But she stood back aloof, and said, "The proofs of my brother's release, your highness?"

His highness received this temporary rebuff with resignation. "Be sure, I have brought them," he said. "Have the maid call your man-servant, who is in the corridor, arrived this minute from Spangenberg."

Gretel opened the door and called softly, "Antoine!" Immediately the old servant entered, bowing with a grave deference that was full of dignity. He wore riding-boots, and carried in one hand his hat and whip, in the other a folded piece of paper, which he now held out to Catherine. She took it to the candle-light, and read the few lines hastily scribbled in pencil. It was a message from Gerard, and told of his release.

"You saw him safe out of the prison?" she then asked Antoine.

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"On a good horse, and provided with money?" she continued, quoting from the letter.

"Yes, mademoiselle, with my own eyes; and well out of the town, with a passport to assure his not being stopped anywhere on the road."

"Then wait in the corridor, Antoine. Will you, too, Gretel, wait there?"

The Landgrave looked surprised at these orders, but, before he could put his disapprobation into more than a frown, the two servants had left the room. Catherine stepped at once to the door, locked it, withdrew the key, and started towards the alcove. The Landgrave's frown gave way to a smile of eager gratification, and he made to grasp her in his arms as she passed him. But she eluded his embrace, and ran towards the alcove. With a look of amused enlightenment, as if he thought her flight a mere trick of coquetry, he ran after her; but his arms, again extended in the hope of clasping her, closed on nothing as the curtains fell behind her. His highness laughed, and, pressing forward, opened the curtains to follow her.

And, instead of the woman he had thought himself about to possess, he saw, standing where the curtains met, that woman's lover, the man he had tried to destroy, the man he had reported dead, the man for whom his soldiers were even now scouring the roads in the vicinity of his capital.

The look on that man's face added nothing to the Landgrave's pleasure at the unexpected meeting.

Frederick II. recoiled a step or two, and stood for a moment as if petrified, his jaw moving spasmodically without producing any speech.

Dick stepped out from between the curtains, keeping his eyes fixed on the Landgrave's. Catherine now stood looking forth from the alcove, affrightedly watching for what terrible thing might next occur.

The Landgrave recovered himself, and made for the door.

"You forget it is locked," said Dick. "It is true, you might call for help, but if you did I should kill you. Do not look incredulous. I know that ordinarily you are a sovereign prince, with a people and an army behind you, and that I am a hunted man, the least powerful in your dominion. But at this moment we are on fairer terms, with just what powers nature gave us, except that I have a sword and you have not. So now it is the weaker man that is my subject, the stronger man that is your prince!"

The Landgrave looked at the door, Dick's sword, then at Catherine.

"Treachery!" he said, in a voice deprived of strength by his feelings. "For this I freed your brother, mademoiselle, trusting you implicitly. It seems one needs more assurance than the honor of a lady-in-waiting!"

"Your highness may recall," said Dick, "that her promise was made on your assurance that a certain person was dead. Did that lie, and the plot by which her brother was tricked into his peril, comport with the honor of a sovereign prince? But this is wasting time and talk. Mademoiselle de St. Valier and I intend to leave this palace unhindered and unpursued. It rests with you as to the state in which you shall be left behind."

The Landgrave looked bewildered. It seemed incredible that a ruling prince should be so helplessly placed, in his own palace, but a second glance assured him that this was no dream,--that the locked door, the sword in Dick's hand, and the expression on Dick's face, were very actual facts.

"Mademoiselle de St. Valier shall never go," his highness said at last. "As for you, I will let you pass out free. I cannot forget the service you rendered the Landgravine."

Dick gave a short laugh of derision. "Can I not get it through your thick skull," he said, "that I am the one in position to offer terms? You sovereign princes of Germany, we are told, have absolute power, but you seem to be very stupid. In my country, we are quicker to grasp a situation. It is a country, too, that has recently declared all men to be, in their rights, created equal. So you see that, to me, the blood of a prince is no more sacred than another man's!"

At this moment there came from the door one of those creaking or straining sounds that seem to occur unaccountably.

The Landgrave gave a start of elation, as if this sound betokened an interruption. But Dick instantly flashed his sword before the Landgrave's eyes, and said:

"If any one breaks in while I am here, he will find something stretched on the floor, and to-morrow the people will cry 'Long live the Landgrave!' for your son. You see that each moment we lose is as dangerous to you as to me, because it brings the possibility of interruption."

The noise at the door proved to signify nothing; whereupon the Landgrave, who had given a shudder at Dick's picture of the possible morrow, now showed as much relief as he had first shown pleasure.

"Then what do you request?" asked the Landgrave, trying to conceal, by his best pretence of dignity, his inward rage and chagrin.

"I request nothing," said Dick. "I demand nothing. I merely offer to leave without harming you, on condition that you will not give any alarm of our departure, or orders for our pursuit."

"Very well, I agree," said the Landgrave, with a readiness that made Dick laugh again.

"Of course you do, for you think you can break the condition, and have us stopped by your guards before we are out of the city, or even out of the palace. I must provide against that."

"I give you my word of honor, neither to leave this room nor to make any alarm, till daybreak."

"It seems, one needs better assurance than the honor of a sovereign prince," said Dick, imitating the Landgrave's own words with a slight alteration. He then took from his pocket a phial given him at the riverside by Romberg, who had provided himself, on hearing of the trick played on the conspirators, with means of self-destruction in case of capture. Dick quickly took up a pitcher of water from the table, poured some of it into a glass, uncorked the phial with his teeth, and dropped a small portion of the liquid into the water. Meanwhile, Catherine, foreseeing Dick's plans, put on a hooded cloak, and gathered up her purse and what small things of value she desired to retain.

"Drink this," said Dick to the Landgrave, from whom he had not for an instant taken his eyes.

"What do you mean?" said the Landgrave, turning pale.

"To make it easier for you to keep your princely word, your highness! Don't be afraid. It takes more than this quantity to kill a man. What is here will merely enable you to pass the few hours till daybreak in sleep. It would be a pity so great a prince should suffer from insomnia or ennui during that length of time! Drink, man! I am becoming a little bored with this place, myself."

An impatient movement of the sword--which weapon Dick had so managed as to check every one of his highness's numerous impulses to rush upon him--ended Frederick's hesitation. He petulantly drank the contents of the glass, and handed it back to Dick, who motioned him to put it on the table and to go to the couch.

"Call Antoine," said Dick to Catherine, following the Landgrave close to the couch on which the latter dropped.

Noiselessly Catherine unlocked the door and let in the two servants. Gretel, as soon as she saw what was up, begged to be taken along, and found a cloak for herself in the room. Antoine, at Dick's whispered direction, took coverings from the bed in the alcove, and knotted them together so as to form a means of descent from the balcony. Meanwhile, Catherine had relocked the door and possessed herself of the phial, which Dick had placed on the table.

"Come," said Dick, taking Catherine's hand and leading the way towards the open window, when at last the Landgrave slept. "Put out the light, Antoine, and let us hasten. In a few hours, that old snoring rascal will be a prince again!"