nsult offered him that day aroused his wrath, and he
cherished it as if it were a consolation.

He had thrown power aside with the staff of command. Power! It too was
potter's trash, which a stone might shatter, a flower in full bloom,
whose leaves drop apart if touched by the finger! It was no noble metal,
only yellow mica!

The knocker on the door never stopped rapping. One officer after another
came to soothe him, but he would not even admit his lieutenant.

He rejoiced over his hasty deed. Fortune, he thought, cannot be escaped,
art cannot be thrown aside; fame may be trampled under foot, yet still
pursue us.

Power has this advantage over all three, it can be flung off like a
worn-out doublet. Let it fly! Had he owed it the happiness of the last
few weeks? No, no! He would have been happy with his mother in a poor,
plain house, without the office of Eletto, without flowers, horses or
servants. It was to her, not to power, that he was indebted for every
blissful hour, and now that she had gone, how desolate was the void in
his heart!

Suddenly the recollection of his father and Ruth illumined his misery
like a sunbeam. The game of Eletto was now over, he would go to Antwerp
the next day.

Why had fate snatched his mother from him just now, why did it deny him
the happiness of seeing his parents united? His father--she had sorely
wronged him, but for what will not death atone? He must take him some
remembrance of her, and went to her room to look through her chest.
But it no longer stood in the old place--the owner of the house, a rich
matron, who had been compelled to occupy an attic-room, while strangers
were quartered in her residence, had taken charge of the pale orphan and
the boxes after Florette's death.

The good Netherland dame provided for the adopted child and the property
of her enemy, the man whose soldiers had pillaged her brothers and
cousins. The death of the woman below had moved her deeply, for the
wonderful charm of Florette's manner had won her also.

Towards midnight Ulrich took the lamp and went upstairs. He had long
since forgotten to spare others, by denying himself a wish.

The knocking at the door and the passing to and fro in the entry had
kept Frau Geel awake. When she heard the Eletto's heavy step, she sprang
up from her spinning-wheel in alarm, and the maid-servant, half roused
from sleep, threw herself on her knees.

"Frau Geel!" called a voice outside.

She recognized Nav