The magnificence of my feast, and my behavior at it, held at first the credulous inhabitants of the city firmly to their preconceived opinion.  True, it was soon stated in the newspapers that the whole story of the journey of the king of Prussia had been a mere groundless rumor:  but a king I now was, and must, spite of everything, a king remain, and truly one of the most rich and royal who had ever existed; only people did not rightly know what king.  The world has never had reason to complain of the scarcity of monarchs, at least in our time.  The good people who had never seen any of them pitched with equal correctness first on one and then on another; Count Peter still remained who he was.

At one time appeared amongst the guests at the Bath a tradesman, who had made himself bankrupt in order to enrich himself; and who enjoyed universal esteem, and had a broad though somewhat pale shadow.  The property which he had scraped together he resolved to lay out in ostentation, and it even occurred to him to enter into rivalry with me.  I had recourse to my purse, and soon brought the poor devil to such a pass that, in order to save his credit, he was obliged to become bankrupt a second time, and hasten over the frontier.  Thus I got rid of him.  In this neighborhood I made many idlers and good-for-nothing fellows.

With all the royal splendor and expenditure by which I made all succumb to me, I still in my own house lived very simply and retired.  I had established the strictest circumspection as a rule.  No one except Bendel, under any pretence whatever, was allowed to enter the rooms which I inhabited.  So long as the sun shone I kept myself shut up there, and it was said “the Count is employed with his cabinet.”  With this employment numerous couriers stood in connection, whom I, for every trifle, sent out and received.  I received company in the evening only under my trees, or in my hall arranged and lighted according to Bendel’s plan.  When I went out, on which occasions it was necessary that I should be constantly watched by the Argus eyes of Bendel, it was only to the Forester’s Garden, for the sake of one alone; for my love was the innermost heart of my life.

Oh, my good Chamisso!  I will hope that thou hast not yet forgotten what love is!  I leave much unmentioned here to thee.  Mina was really an amiable, kind, good child.  I had taken her whole imagination captive.  She could not, in her humility, conceive how she could be worthy that I should alone have fixed my regard on her; and she returned love for love with all the youthful power of an innocent heart.  She loved like a woman, offering herself wholly up; self-forgetting; living wholly and solely for him who was her life; regardless if she herself perished; that is to say—­she really loved.

But I—­oh what terrible hours—­terrible and yet worthy that I should wish them back again—­have I often wept on Bendel’s bosom, when, after the first unconscious intoxication, I recollected myself, looked sharply into myself—­I, without a shadow, with knavish selfishness destroying this angel, this pure soul which I had deceived and stolen.  Then did I resolve to reveal myself to her; then did I swear with a most passionate oath to tear myself from her, and to fly; then did I burst out into tears, and concert with Bendel how in the evening I should visit her in the Forester’s garden.