The king looked at her in amazement.  “Yes, he was saved.  The next day, Madame Bestuchef found means to convince her credulous husband that Trenck was the victim of an intrigue, and entirely innocent of the charge brought against him.  Trenck remained, therefore, the friend of the house, and Madame Bestuchef had the audacity to publicly insult my ambassador.  Trenck now announced himself as a raging adversary of Prussia.  He inflamed the heart of his powerful mistress with hate, and they swore the destruction of Prussia.  Both were zealously engaged in changing the chancellor, my private and confidential friend, into an enemy; and Trenck, the Russian patriot, entered the service of the house of Austria, to intrigue against me and my realm. [Footnote:  Trenck himself writes on this subject:  “I would at that time have changed my fatherland into a howling wilderness, if the opportunity had offered.  I do not deny that from this moment I did everything that was possible, in Russia, to promote the views of the imperial ambassador, Duke Vernis, who knew how to nourish the fire already kindled, and to make use of my services.”] Bestuchef, however, withstood these intrigues, and in his distrust he watched over and threatened his faithless wife and faithless friend.  Trenck would have been lost, without doubt, if a lucky accident had not again rescued him.  His cousin the pandour died in Vienna, and, as Trenck believed that he had left him a fortune of some millions, he tore his tender ties asunder, and hastened to Vienna to receive this rich inheritance, which, to his astonishment, he found to consist not in millions, but in law processes.  This, Amelia, is the history of Trenck during these five years in which you have received no news from him.  Can you still say that he has never forgotten you? that you are bound to be faithful to him?  You see I do not speak to you as a king, but as a friend, and that I look at all these unhappy circumstances from your standpoint.  Treat me, then, as a friend, and answer me sincerely.  Do you still feel bound by your oath?  Do you not know that he is a faithless traitor, and that he has forgotten you?”

The princess had listened to the king with a bowed head and downcast eyes.  Now she looked up; the fire of inspiration beamed in her eye, a melancholy smile played upon her lips.

“Sire,” said she, “I took my vow without conditions, and I will keep it faithfully till my death.  Suppose, even, that a part of what you have said is true, Trenck is young; you cannot expect that his ardent and passionate heart should be buried under the ashes of the vase of tears in which our love, in its beauty and bloom, crumbled to dust.  But his heart, however unstable it may appear, turns ever back faithfully to that fountain, and he seeks to purify and sanctify the wild and stormy present by the remembrance of the beautiful and innocent past.  You say that Trenck forgot me in his prosperity:  well, then, sire, in his misfortune he has remembered me.  In his misfortune he has forgotten the faithless, cold, and treacherous letter which I wrote to him, and which he received in the prison of Glatz.  In his wretchedness, he has written to me, and called upon me for aid.  It shall not, be said that I did not hear his voice—­that I was not joyfully ready to serve him!”