Princess Charlotte Louise—­that is to say, never loved her with your heart, but only with your vanity and ambition.  It was very flattering to you to be loved by a Princess, and ambition whispered to you that through your wife you might become reigning Elector, if the Electoral Prince were only put out of the way by fate or some other obliging hand.  There was surely some prospect of this, and you know how exultingly we both looked forward to such a future.  But we made shipwreck of those plans, and now it is too late to build them anew.  However, let us not mourn over the past, but forget it.  This hour has witnessed your last lament over your dead past.  Its knell has been rung, let us both now doom it to oblivion.  I have retained one thing in my memory, however, and that is the note which the incautious Princess gave you that evening in the greenhouse.  Do you still possess it?”

“Yes, I still possess it, and as often as I look at it my heart is like to burst with indignation and wrath!”

“On the contrary, Adolphus, you ought to rejoice whenever you look at it, for you can turn this little note into a formidable weapon against the Electoral house.  With this note you can some day force the young Elector to make you my successor, confirm you in the rank of Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, or even, if you still wish it, make you the husband of his sister Charlotte Louise.  Ah! my son, a note in which the Elector’s sister invites you to a rendezvous by night is worth more to you, indeed, than if you could go out against your enemy with an army, for an army might be vanquished, but in this billet-doux of the Princess each stroke of her hand becomes a soldier fighting with invincible armor.”

“You are right, most gracious father,” said Count Adolphus, with a sinister expression of face.  “The day may come when I shall march out these soldiers against the faithless Princess and her whole house!  I hate her, I hate them all, and my whole heart longs for revenge, and—­”

“Your excellency,” said a chamberlain, approaching hastily—­“your excellency, a courier from Koenigsberg has just arrived, and is the bearer of this dispatch from the Elector.”

The Stadtholder took the proffered packet, and by a hurried sign dismissed the chamberlain.

“A courier from Koenigsberg,” he said, with a slight shaking of the head, as he examined the great sealed envelope which he held in his hand.  “A writing from the Electoral Government Office, when Schulenburg was just with me this very day, the bearer of verbal communications!  I do not understand it!”

“The best plan would be, most revered father, to open the letter!” cried Count Adolphus briskly.  “You will then see what news it contains.”

The Stadtholder made no answer, but tore off the cover and drew forth the inner paper.  Slowly he unfolded this, and read.

His son had involuntarily advanced a few steps nearer, and watched his father’s countenance with the impatience of suspense.  He saw him turn pale, his brow darken, and his lips become firmly compressed.