“Remain, Von Pollnitz, but allow us to step for a moment upon the balcony.  It is a wondrous night.  What we two have to say to each other, only heaven, with its shining stars, dare hear; I believe they only can understand our speech.”

“I thank you! oh, I thank you!” whispered Trenck, pressing the hand of Amelia to his lips.

“Your royal highness, then, graciously allowed me to come here,” said Pollnitz, with a complaining voice, “in order to give me up entirely to my own thoughts, and force me to play the part of a Trappist.  I shall, if I understand rightly my privileges, like the lion in the fairy tale, guard the door of that paradise in which my young friend revels in his first sunny dream of bliss.  Your royal highness must confess that this is cruel work; but I am ready to undertake it, and place myself, like the angel with the flaming sword, before the door, ready to slay any serpent who dares undertake to enter this elysium.”

The princess pointed to a table upon which game, fruit, and Spanish wine had been placed.  “You will find there distraction and perhaps consolation, and I hope you will avail yourself of it.  Farewell, baron; we place ourselves under your protection; guard us well.”  She opened the door and stepped with her lover upon the balcony.

Pollnitz looked after them contemptuously.  “Poor child! she is afraid of herself; she requires a duenna, and that she should have chosen exactly me for that purpose was a wonderful idea.  Alas! my case is indeed pitiful; I am selected to play the part of a duenna.  No one remembers that I have ears to hear and teeth to bite.  I am supposed to see, nothing more.  But what shall I see, what can I see in this dark night, which the god of love has so clouded over in compassion to this innocent and tender pair of doves?  This was a rich, a truly romantic and girlish idea to grant her lover a rendezvous, it is true, under God’s free heaven, but upon a balcony of three feet in length, with no seat to repose upon after the powerful emotions of a burning declaration of love.  Well, for my part I find it more comfortable to rest upon this divan and enjoy my evening meal, while these two dreamers commune with the night-birds and the stars.”

He threw himself upon the seat, seized his knife and fork, and indulged himself in the grouse and truffles which had been prepared for him.

CHAPTER VII.

On the balcony.

Without, upon the balcony, stood the two lovers.  With their arms clasped around each other, they gazed up at the dark heavens—­too deeply moved for utterance.  They spoke to each other in the exalted language of lovers (understood only by the angels), whose words are blushes, sighs, glances, and tender pressures of the hand.

In the beginning this was their only language.  Both shrank from interrupting this sweet communion of souls by earthly material speech.  Suddenly their glances fell from heaven earthward.  They sought another heaven, and other and dearer stars.  Their eyes, accustomed to the darkness, met; their blushes and their happy smiles, though not seen, were understood and felt, and at the same moment they softly called each other’s names.