useful lad.

Two leading ideas now filled Count Vavel's entire soul.

One was an enthusiastic admiration for a high ideal, whose embodiment he
believed he had found in the lovely person of his young charge. All the
emotions that a man of deep and profound nature lavishes on his faithful
love, his only offspring, his queen, his guardian saint, Count Ludwig
now bestowed on this one woman, who endured with patience, renounced
with meekness, forgave and loved with her whole heart, and who, even in
her banishment, adored her native land which had repulsed and cruelly
persecuted her.

The second idea encompassed all the emotions of an opposing passion: a
boundless hatred for the giant who, with strides that covered kingdoms
and empires, was marching over the entire eastern hemisphere, marking
his every step with graves and human skeletons; an enmity toward the
Titan who was using thrones as footstools, and who had made himself a
god over a greater portion of Europe,

Count Vavel was not the only one who cherished a hatred of this sort; it
was felt all over Europe. What was happening in those days could be
learned only through the English newspapers. Liberty of speech was
prohibited throughout the entire continent. Only an indiscreet
correspondent would trust his secret to the post; and Ludwig Vavel only
by the exercise of extreme caution could learn from his banker in
Holland what was necessary for him to know. Through this medium he
learned of the general discontent with the methods of the all-powerful
one. He learned of the plans of the Philadelphia Club, which counted
among its members renowned officers in the army of France. He heard that
a number of distinguished Frenchmen had offered their services and
swords to the foreign imperial army against their own hated emperor. He
heard of the dissatisfied murmuring among the French people against the
frightful waste of human life, the never-ending intrigues, the
approaching shadows of the coalition.

All this he heard there in the Nameless Castle, while he waited for his
watchword, ready when it came to reply: "Here!"

And while he waited he interested himself also in what was going on in
the land in which he sojourned. He had two sources for acquiring
information on this subject--Herr Mercatoris in Fertoeszeg, and the young
attorney, who was now living in Pest. The count corresponded with both
gentlemen,--personally he had never spoken to the pastor, and but once
to h