cript.--Why haven't you mentioned a word about the little gold
heart which my countess sent to my Burgei? And no one is to send me any
more petitions, or to come to me. I won't receive another one. As long
as I live, I'll be sorry for having anything to do with Zenza and
Thomas; but perhaps it's all for the best and may be he's turned out
better. Don't think hard of it, dear Hansei, but I beg you, once more,
to have very little to do with the host of the Chamois. He's a rogue,
and a dangerous one at that, but you needn't tell him that I say so,
for I want the ill-will of no one. I send my love to all good friends.
I must stop now, my hand is quite stiff with writing.

"Stop! I must begin again. I send you a picture of myself and my
prince. It was taken in a sort of peepshow, before we came out here,
and now, as long as the world lasts, the prince and I will always be
together, and I'll be holding him in my arms. But I am still with you,
dear Hansei, and you, dear mother, and, most of all, with my dear child
that I bear in my heart where no one can look. Don't show the picture
to any one.

"But, dear me! what good will it do if you don't show it? Mademoiselle
Kramer tells me that they've made a hundred thousand pictures of me and
the prince, and now I am hanging up in all the shops, and wherever I go
they know me as well as the king and the queen, whose pictures hang
next to mine. I feel as if I wanted no one ever to see me again, but
when I think of it, it's really an honor after all. I am out in the
world now, and must let them do what they please with me.

"But I shall ever be true to you, and I am at home nowhere but with
you, and am always there in thought."

CHAPTER XIV.

"How goes it, Walpurga?" asked Baum, one morning, when the nurse was
looking out of the window of the ground floor.

"Oh, dear," replied she, "this is a real paradise."

"Indeed!"

"Could it be any finer in paradise? The people live without care and
have nothing to do but eat and drink and laugh and go out walking."

"You're right there; but still it was finer in paradise, for there
father Adam couldn't covet another man's wife, as his was the only one
in the world."

"What queer notions you have," said Walpurga, laughing; and Baum,
feeling flattered, added:

"In paradise they had no use for servants, no coachman, no cook, no
house, no clothes. There were no boots to be cleaned, because there
wer