"

"Oh, listen, your highness!" cried Thusnelda, after having hastily
perused the contents of the ducal missive.

"'I hope I have succeeded to surprise you! Demons and wizards have
closed your doors, And weeping you slept on the stairway alone. All
witchcraft has now disappeared. Go seek The surprise that from Berlin I
brought you, Which I now offer for an atonement.'"

"An insolent fellow, indeed, is my son," said the duchess, "but you see,
Thusnelda, he says, pater peccavi, and I am convinced that you will find
something very pretty and acceptable in your room."

"I will not take it--indeed I will not," pouted the lady of honor. "He
so fearfully tormented me last night. I assure your highness I was half
dead with terror and--"

"And yet you will forgive him, Thusnelda, for the duke is your declared
favorite; you dare not reproach him were he never so insolent, for you
are just as much so, and not a hair's-breadth better. Come, go up and
see what it is."

She went, and found four masons, who had been at work since daybreak to
remove the wall and replace the door. Thusnelda was obliged to laugh in
spite of the unhappy night she had passed, as she climbed over rubbish
and ruins into her room, and met her maid dissolved in tears, who
related to her that "the duke had had her walled in, for fear she would
tell the trick to her mistress."

"And so you were really hermetically sealed?" said the duchess.

"Yes, your highness," whimpered the maid, "I thought I never should
see daylight again. I wept and prayed all night. The only thing that
consoled me was the duke's command, which Philip brought to me, to give
this little box to Fraulein so soon as the wall should be taken away in
the morning."

"Give it to me, Lieschen," cried Thusnelda, impatiently, her face
beaming with satisfaction, however, when she opened the box. "Now,
duchess, that is what I call a surprise, and the duke shall be, as he
ever has been, my favorite. If he does sometimes play rude tricks, he
makes it all right again, in a very generous and princely manner. See
what a beautiful watch his highness has brought me, ornamented with
diamonds!"

"Yes, it is very pretty; give it to me that I may return it to the duke,
and not mortify him too much, as you will not wear it."

"I will accept it, duchess," cried Thusnelda, laughing--"and all is
forgiven and forgotten."

CHAPTER XXIV. THE PURSE-PROUD MAN.

"Trude, is there no news from him ye