s
is the secret of his love. She is the confidante of the princess, who
receives every week long and confidential letters from the tent of her
tender husband. Fraulein Marshal is naturally acquainted with their
contents. The prince certainly speaks in these letters of his love and
devotion, but also a little of the king's plans of battle. Fraulein von
Marshal knows all this. If Belleville obtains her love and confidence,
he will receive pretty correct information of what goes on in the tent
of the king and in the camp councils. So Belleville will have most
important dispatches to forward to his Marquise de Pompadour dispatches
for which he will be one day rewarded with honor and fortune. This is
the Frenchman's plan! I see through him as I do through the Russian.
They are both paid spies informers of their governments nothing more.
They will be paid, or they will be hung, according as accident is
favorable or unfavorable to them." Ranuzi was silent, and walked hastily
backward and forward in the rood. Upon his high, pale brow dark thoughts
were written, and flashes of anger flamed from his eyes.

"And I," said he, after a long pause, "am I in any respect better
than they? Will not the day come when I also will be considered as
a purchased spy? a miserable informer? and my name branded with this
title? No, no; away with this dark spectre, which floats like a black
cloud between me and my purpose! My aim is heaven; and what I do, I do
in the name of the Church--in the service of this great, exalted Church,
whose servant and priest I am. No, no; the world will not call me a spy,
will not brand my name with shame. God will bless my efforts as the Holy
Father in Rome has blessed them, and I shall reach the goal."

Ranuzi was brilliantly handsome in this inspired mood; his noble and
characteristic face seemed illuminated and as beautiful as the angel of
darkness, when surrounded by a halo of heavenly light.

"It is an exalted and great aim which I have set before me," said he,
after another pause; "a work which the Holy Father himself confided to
me. I must and I will accomplish it to the honor of God and the
Holy Madonna. This blasphemous war must end; this atheistical and
free-thinking king must be reduced, humbled, and cast down from the
stage he has mounted with such ostentatious bravado. Silesia must be
torn from the hands of this profligate robber and incorporated in the
crown of our apostolic majesty of Austria. The