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 respect to the Greek; but in truth I have very little to tell you.
From the prince I can learn nothing, as he has been admitted into her
confidence, and is, I believe, bound to secrecy. The fact has, however,
transpired that she is not a Greek, as we supposed, but a German of the
highest descent. From a certain report that has reached me, it would
appear that her mother is of the most exalted rank, and that she is the
fruit of an unfortunate amour which was once talked of all over Europe.
A course of secret persecution to which she had been exposed, in
consequence of her origin, compelled her to seek protection in Venice,
and to adopt that concealment which had rendered it imp