They sat down together, and Irma taught Walpurga how to use the pen. Walpurga said that she did not care to write single letters, and that she would prefer having a word to copy.
Irma wrote the word "pardon" for her. Walpurga filled a whole sheet with that word, and when Irma left the room, she took the writing with her, saying:
"I shall preserve this as a memento of this hour."
CHAPTER III.
"What can be the matter with the queen?--"
--"Her majesty," added Mademoiselle Kramer.
--"What can it be?" said Walpurga; "for some days, the prince--"
"His royal highness," said Mademoiselle Kramer.
--"Has hardly been noticed by her. Before that, whenever she saw the child and held it to her heart, she always seemed lifted up to the skies, and once said to me: 'Walpurga, didn't it make you feel as if you'd become a girl again, free and independent of everything? To me, the world is nothing but myself and my child'--and now she hardly looks at it, just as if her having had a child were a dream. There must be great trouble in a mother's heart--"
"Royal mother," said Mademoiselle Kramer.