Fifteen years are supposed to elapse before the curtain is again rolled up; and that this allusion may be rendered the more perfect, the audience is kept waiting about three times fifteen minutes, to amuse one another during the entr’acte.  We next learn that Rudolph is seated upon his ducal throne, fortunate in the possession of a paragon-wife, and a steward of the household not to be equalled—­no other than Ottocar—­that particular friend, who, in the prologue, tried to get a finis put to his mortal career.  The jocose ruffians here enliven the scene—­one by being cast into a dungeon for asking Ottocar (evidently the Colburn of his day), an exorbitant price for the copyright of a certain manuscript; the other, by calling the courtier a man of genius, and being taken into his service, as no doubt, “first robber.”  To support this character, a change of apparel is necessary:  and no wonder, for Wolfstein has on precisely the same clothes he wore fifteen years before.

His first job is to steal a casket; but is declined, probably, because Wolfstein, being a professor of the capital crime, considers mere larceny infra dig.  A “second robber” must therefore be hired, and Ottocar has one already preserved in the castle dungeons, in the person of a dumb prisoner.  Dummy comes on, and the auditors at once recognise the “brother” who was not murdered in the prologue.  He steals the casket, and Ottocar steals off.

The duke and duchess next enter into a dialogue, the subject of which is one Wilhelm, a young standard-bearer, who appears; and having said a few words exits, that Ida, the duchess, might inform us, in a soliloquy, what we have already shrewdly suspected, namely—­that the ensign is her son; another presentiment comes into one’s mind, which one don’t think it fair to the author and his story to entertain till the proper time.  A sort of secret interview between the mother and son now takes place, which ends by the imprisonment of the latter; why is not explained at the moment; nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an impassable river, bristling with chevaux-de-frise it is impossible to get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may be surely calculated upon.  In the present instance, this formulary is not omitted, for Wilhelm jumps into the river from a bridge which he has contrived to reach.  Though several shots are fired into the tank of water that represents the Rhine, there is no hissing; on the contrary, the second act ends amidst general applause; which indeed it deserves, for the scenery is magnificent.