“I do love you, Rebecca—­I do love you!  For your sake I have become a criminal, a murderer!  I have purchased you at the price of my soul!  Lay your ear close to my mouth, and I will tell you my dreadful secret:  Rebecca, I am a murderer, a cursed murderer!  I have committed a murder, which will cry out to Heaven against me as long as I live; for him whom I have murdered had never done me harm, but only good, and he confided in me, and trusted to my faith.  Rebecca, I am cursed, and my name will be a byword in the mouths of men while books of history last.  Rebecca, I have poisoned the Electoral Prince Frederick William!”

She uttered a piercing shriek, and fell back, as if struck by a thunderbolt.

“The Electoral Prince Frederick William!  Not Count Schwarzenberg!  The noble youth; not that detested evildoer, not him, who has deserved death a thousandfold?”

“He had not merely my life in his power, but yours and our child’s.  It would have profited me nothing to murder him; we should only all three have been irretrievably lost.  I was forced to obey his orders—­to perform the horrible deed—­in order to save you and myself.”

Rebecca pressed both hands tightly across her brow, and stared long at vacancy.  “He must be saved!” she said.  Then, after a pause, in a tone of firm determination, “Yes, he must be saved!”

“What could we do to save him?” sighed Gabriel hopelessly.  “Nothing!  You know your father’s drugs are subtle, and never fail in their effects!”

“You administered to him some of the medicine which my father presented you with?” asked she, with a wondrous gleam of light in her black eyes.

“Yes, I gave him some.  You know when we took leave of your father he handed me three boxes as a keepsake, saying that they were the only dowry he could give me with you, but that many a prince would pay us immense sums for them, if we should sell them to him for his dear relations; for in these boxes were the deadliest poisons, leaving behind not a trace of their existence.  The contents of one box causes instantaneous death, and he therefore called it ‘the apoplexy powder.’  The contents of the second box killed more slowly, and prolonged the patient’s life ten or twelve days; therefore he called it ‘the inflammatory powder.’  The third powder, however, because it works slowest of all, he called ’the consumptive powder.’”

“And of which powder did you give to the Electoral Prince?” asked Rebecca breathlessly.

“Of the inflammatory powder, for it was least dangerous to us.”

“Did the Prince drink the whole potion poured out for him?”

“No, he only drank half, and when he tried to hand it to his father, who asked for it, the glass fell from his trembling hands, and its contents were spilled upon the table.”

“Therefore the Prince only took half a powder?”

“Only half.  But still he must die, for your father told me one pinch would produce death; and I gave him two, that the count might see its effects.”