Amelia understood all.  With flashing eyes, with glowing cheeks, she exclaimed:  “I will set him at liberty; he suffers because he loves me; for my sake he languishes in a lonely prison.  I will free him if it costs me my heart’s blood, drop by drop!  Now, King Frederick, you shall see that I am indeed your sister; that I have a will even like your own.  My life belongs to my beloved; if I cannot share it with him, I will offer it up to him—­I swear this; may God condemn me if I break my oath!  Trenck shall be free! that is the mission of my life.  Now, friend, come to my help; all that I am and have I offer up.  I have gold, I have diamonds, I gave an estate given me by my father.  I will sell all to liberate him; we will, if necessary, bribe the whole garrison.  But now, before all other things, I must write to him.”

“I promise he shall receive your letter,” said Mademoiselle von Haak; “I will send it to Lieutenant Schnell.  I will enclose it to my mother; no one here must know that I correspond with an officer at the fortress of Glatz.”

“No one dare know that, till the day of Trenck’s liberation,” said Amelia, with a radiant smile.

CHAPTER XI.

The Undeceived.

Since the day Joseph Fredersdorf introduced Lupinus to Eckhof, an affectionate intercourse had grown up between them.  They were very happy in each other, and Fredersdorf asserted that there was more of love than friendship in their hearts, that Lupinus was not the friend but the bride of Eckhof!  In fact, Lupinus had but little of the unembarrassed, frank, free manner of a young man.  He was modest and reserved, never sought Eckhof; but when the latter came to him, his pale face colored with a soft red, and his great eyes flashed with a wondrous glow.  Eckhof could not but see how much his silent young friend rejoiced in his presence.

He came daily to Lupinus.  It strengthened and consoled him in the midst of his nervous, restless artist-life, to look upon the calm, peaceful face of his friend; this alone, without a word spoken, soothed his heart—­agitated by storms and passions, and made him mild and peaceable.  The quiet room, the books and papers, the weighty folios, the shining, polished medical instruments, these stern realities, formed a strange and strong contrast to the dazzling, shimmering, frivolous, false life of the stage; and all this exercised a wondrous influence upon the artiste.  Eckhof came often, weighed down with care and exhaustion, or in feverish excitement over some new role he was studying, not to speak of his anxieties and perplexities, but to sit silently near Lupinus and looked calmly upon him.

“Be silent, my Lupinus,” said Eckhof to him.  “Let me lay my storm-tossed, wild heart in the moonlight of thy glance; it will be warmed and cooled at the same time.  Let thy mild countenance beam upon me, soften and heal my aching heart.  Look you, when I lay my head thus upon your shoulder, it seems to me I have escaped all trouble; that only far away in the distance do I hear the noise and tumult of the restless, busy world; and I hear the voice of my mother, even as I heard it in my childish days, whispering of God, of paradise, and the angels.  Still, still, friend, let me dream thus upon your shoulder.”