claimed
Civitella, with extreme emotion.

"You have refrained from pressing me, and I gratefully appreciate your
delicacy. In twenty days, as I before said, you shall be fully
satisfied."

"But how is this?" asked Civitella, with agitation and surprise. "What
means all this? I cannot comprehend it."

We explained to him all that we knew, and his indignation was unbounded.
The prince, he asserted, must insist upon full satisfaction; the insult
was unparalleled.

In the meanwhile he implored him to make unlimited use of his fortune
and his credit.

When the marquis left us the prince still continued silent. He paced
the apartment with quick and determined steps, as if some strange and
unusual emotion were agitating his frame. At length he paused,
muttering between his teeth, "Congratulate yourself; he died at ten
o'clock."

We looked at him in terror.

"Congratulate yourself," he repeated. "Did he not say that I should
congratulate myself? What could he have meant?"

"What has reminded you of those words?" I asked; "and what have they to
do with the present business?"

"I did not then understand what the man meant, but now I do. Oh, it is
intolerable to be subject to a master."

"Gracious prince!"

"Who can make us feel our dependence. Ha! it must be sweet, indeed."

He again paused. His looks alarmed me, for I had never before seen him
thus agitated.

"Whether a man be poorest of the poor," he continued, "or the next heir
to the throne, it is all one and the same thing. There is but one
difference between men--to obey or to command."

He again glanced over the letter.

"You know the man," he continued, "who has dared to write these words to
me. Would you salute him in the street if fate had not made him your
master? By Heaven, there is something great in a crown."

He went on in this strain, giving expression to many things which I dare
not trust to paper. On this occasion the prince confided a circumstance
to me which alike surprised and terrified me, and which may be followed
by the most alarming consequences. We have hitherto been entirely
deceived regarding the family relations of the court of --------.

He answered the letter on the spot, notwithstanding my earnest entreaty
that he should postpone doing so; and the strain in which he wrote
leaves no ground to hope for a favorable settlement of those
differences.

You are no doubt impatient, dear O------, to hear something definite
with resp