“Was Baron von Moudenfels among the prisoners?” asked Leonore quickly.

“Yes,” replied Schulmeister, “yes, he was among them.”

“Then you saw him?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

The slow, solemn tone with which her father answered made Leonore tremble.  She looked up questioningly into his face, their eyes met, and were fixed steadily on each other.

“Why do you gaze at me so sadly and compassionately?” asked Leonore suddenly, cowering as though in fright.

“I did not know that I was doing so,” he answered gently.

“You were, you are still,” she cried anxiously.  “Father, I read misfortune in your face.  You are concealing something from me!  You—­oh, heaven, you have news of Kolbielsky.”

She started up, letting the bank-notes fall unheeded to the floor, seized her father’s arm with both hands, and gazed silently at him with panting breath.

He avoided her eyes, released himself almost violently from her grasp, stooped, picked up the bills and divided them into halves, putting five into his breast pocket, and giving his daughter the other five.

“Take it, my Leonore; take the magic key which will open Paradise to you!”

She took the bank-notes and, with a contemptuous gesture, flung them on the floor.

“You know something of Kolbielsky,” she repeated.  “Where is he?  Answer me, father, if you don’t wish me to fall dead at your feet.”

“Yet if I do answer, poor child, what will it avail you?  He is lost, you cannot save him.”

She neither shrieked nor wept, she only grasped her father’s arm more firmly and looked him steadily in the face.

“Where is Kolbielsky?” she asked.  “Answer, or I will kill myself.”

“Well, Leonore, I will give you a proof of my infinite love.  I will tell you the truth, the whole truth.  When the prisoners were dragged out of the hut, one of them suddenly made an attempt to escape.  The soldier tried to hold him, they struggled—­in the scuffle the conspirator’s wig fell off.  Hitherto he had had white hair—­”

“It was Baron von Moudenfels?” asked Leonore breathlessly.

“Yes, Leonore, it was Baron von Moudenfels.  But when the wig was torn from his head, we saw no old man, no Baron von Moudenfels, but—­”

“Kolbielsky!” she shrieked with a loud cry of anguish.

Her father nodded, and let his head sink upon his breast.

“And he, too, was shot this morning?” she asked in a low, strange whisper.

“No, Leonore.  I told you that the emperor, out of regard for his future ally, the Emperor Francis, did not have him executed.  He simply imprisoned him and punished him only by compelling him to witness the execution.  He will leave it to the Emperor Francis to pronounce sentence of death upon the assassin.”

“He lives?  You will swear that he lives?” she asked breathlessly.

“I will swear that he lives, and that he will live until the return of the courier whom Count Bubna, who is in Schoenbrunn attending to the peace negotiations—­has sent to Totis to the Emperor Francis.”