Giving himself up to these happy thoughts, the master of ceremonies sought the young lieutenant, in order to hand him the letter of the princess.

“The fortress is ready to surrender,” cried he; “advance and storm it, and you will enter the open door of the heart as conqueror.  I have prepared the way for you to see the princess every day:  make use of your opportunities like a brave, handsome, young, and loving cavalier.  I predict you will soon be a general, or a prince, or something great and envied.”

“A general, a prince, or a high traitor, who must lay his head upon the block and expiate his guilt with his life,” said Trench thoughtfully.  “Let it be so.  In order to become this high traitor, I must first be the happiest, the most enviable of men.  I shall not think that too dearly paid for by my heart’s blood.  Oh, Amelia, Amelia!  I love thee boundlessly; thou art my happiness, my salvation, my hope; thou—­”

“Enough, enough!” said Pollnitz, laughing and placing his hands upon his ears.  “These are well-known, well-used, and much-abused phrases, which have been repeated in all languages since the time of Adam, and which after all are only lovely and fantastic lies.  Act, my young friend, but say nothing; you know that walls have ears.  The table upon which you write your letters, and the portfolio in which you place the letters of the princess, to be guarded to all eternity, both have prying eyes.  Prudence, prudence! burn the letters of the princess, and write your own with sympathetic ink or in cipher, so that no man can read them, and none but God and the devil may know your dangerous secret.”

Trenck did not hear one word of this; he was too happy, too impassioned, too young, to listen to the words of warning and caution of the old roue.  He read again and again, and with ever-increasing rapture, the letter of the princess; he pressed it to his throbbing heart and glowing lips, and fixed his loving eyes upon those characters which her hand had written and her heart had dictated.

Pollnitz looked at him with a subdued smile, and enjoyed his raptures, even as the fox enjoys the graceful flappings of the wings, the gentle movements of the dove, when he knows that she cannot escape him, and grants her a few moments of happiness before he springs upon and strangles her.  “I wager that you know that letter by heart,” said he, as he slowly lighted a match in order to kindle his cigar; “am I not right? do you not know it by heart?”

“Every word is written in letters of flame upon my heart.”

With a sudden movement, the baron snatched the paper from the young man and held it in the flames,

“Stop! stop!” cried Frederick von Trenck, and he tried to tear the letter from him.

Pollnitz kept him off with one arm and waved the burning paper over his head.

“My God! what have you done?” cried the young man.

“I have made a sacrifice to the god of silence,” said he solemnly; “I have burnt this paper lest it might be used to light the scaffold upon which you may one day burn as a high traitor.  Thank me, young man.  I have perhaps saved you from discovery and from death.”