“Nonsense, Max, nonsense,” though I was so pleased with his gratitude I could have wept.

“It is not nonsense.  You have saved me from becoming a mummy.  I see it all, Karl, and shudder to think of the life that might have been mine.  I take no pleasure in seeing gouty old dependents bowing, kneeling, and smirking before me.  Of course, these things are my prerogative, and a man born to them may not forego what is due to his birth even though it irks him.  But such an existence—­I will not call it living—­saps the juice of life.  Even dear old mother is compelled to suppress her love for me.  Often she has pressed me to her breast only to thrust me away at the approach of footsteps.  By the way, Karl,” continued Max, while preparing for bed, “Yolanda one day at Basel jestingly called me ‘Little Max.’”

“The devil she did,” I exclaimed, unable to restrain my words.

“Yes,” answered Max, “and when in surprise I told her that it was my mother’s love-name for me, she laughed saucily, ‘Yes, I know it is.’”

“The dev—­ Max, you can’t mean what you say?” I cried, in an ecstasy of delight over the news he was telling me.

“Indeed I do,” he returned.  “I told her I loved the name as a sweet reminder of my mother.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She seemed pleased and flashed her eyes on me—­you know the way she has—­and said:  ’I, too, like the name.  It fits you so well—­by contraries.’  Where could she have learned it, and how could she have known it was my mother’s love-name for me?”

“I cannot tell,” I answered.

So! here was a small fact suddenly grown big, since, despite all evidence to the contrary, it brought me back to my old belief that this fair, laughing Yolanda was none other than the great Princess of Burgundy.  I was sure that she had gained all her information concerning Max from my letters to Hymbercourt.

It racks a man’s brain to play shuttlecock with it in that fashion.  While I lay in bed trying to sleep, I thought of the meeting between the duke and the princess at the Postern, and back again flew my mind to the conviction that Yolanda was not, and could not possibly be, the Princess Mary.  For days I had been able to think on no other subject.  One moment she was Yolanda; the next she was the princess; and the next I did not know who she was.  Surely the riddle would drive me mad.  The fate of nations—­but, infinitely more important to me, the fate of Max—­depended upon its solution.

Castleman had told us to remain at the inn until his return, and had exacted from Max, as you will remember, a promise not to visit the House under the Wall, which we had learned was the home of our burgher friend.  We therefore spent our days and evenings in Grote’s garden near the banks of the river Cologne.

One afternoon, while we were sitting at a table sipping wine under the shade of a tree near the river bank, Max said:—­