and announced that the master of ceremonies, Baron
Pollnitz, craved an audience.

Amelia shuddered, but roused herself quickly. "Let him enter!" she said,
hastily. The short moment of expectation seemed an eternity of anguish.
She pressed her hands upon her heart, to still its stormy beatings;
she looked with staring, wide-opened eyes toward the door through
which Pollnitz must enter, and she shuddered as she looked upon the
ever-smiling, immovable face of the courtier, who now entered her
boudoir, with Mademoiselle von Marwitz at his side.

"Do you know, Pollnitz," said she, in a rough, imperious tone--"do you
know I believe your face is not flesh and blood, but hewn from stone;
or, at least, one day it was petrified? Perhaps the fatal hour struck
one day, just as you were laughing over some of your villainies, and
your smile was turned to stone as a judgment. I shall know this look as
long as I live; it is ever most clearly marked upon your visage, when
you have some misfortune to announce."

"Then this stony smile must have but little expression to-day, for I do
not come as a messenger of evil tidings; but if your royal highness will
allow me to say so, as a sort of postillon d'amour."

Amelia shrank back for a moment, gave one glance toward Mademoiselle von
Marwitz, whom she knew full well to be the watchful spy of her mother,
and whose daily duty it was to relate to the queen-mother every thing
which took place in the apartment of the princess. She knew that every
word and look of Pollnitz was examined with the strictest attention.

Pollnitz, however, spoke on with cool self-possession:

"You look astonished, princess; it perhaps appears to you that this
impassive face is little suited to the role of postillon d'amour, and
yet that is my position, and I ask your highness's permission to make
known my errand."

"I refuse your request," said Amelia, roughly; "I have nothing to do
with Love, and find his godship as old and dull as the messenger he has
sent me. Go back, then, to your blind god, and tell him that my ears
are deaf to his love greeting, and the screeching of the raven is more
melodious than the tenderest words a Pollnitz can utter."

The princess said this in her most repulsive tone. She was accustomed
to shield herself in this rude manner from all approach or contact, and,
indeed, she attained her object. She was feared and avoided. Her witty
bon mots and stinging jests were repeated and merrily