"Meta."
The second letter was as follows:
"You will not see it! Beloved, adored Elsa, forgive me! now in the depth of night, when all is still, so still that I can hear the blood coursing through my temples, and I start if our Castor barks in the courtyard; if an apple, which I had forgotten, or which I could not reach, rustles through the dry leaves of the tree in front of my window and falls to the ground--they still look wonderful, but are all rotten--now, only when I read your letter for the second time, do I understand it, and perceive the earnest, sorrowful tone that pierces through the hollow ring of your mirth. One word has made all clear to me; one single, deep, heartfelt word, so deep and so heartfelt as can come only from the heart and the pen of my Elsa. You write: 'He walked up the gallery, the Princess spoke to me very graciously, as was apparent from her smiles and the kind tone of her soft voice; but I confess, to my shame, that her first words were Hebrew to me.' To your shame?--Elsa--Elsa! to mine, to my deepest, most heart-rending shame! Oh, heavens! what does not lie under that one word 'Hebrew!" Your grief, your sorrow, your penitence, your love! Well, then, love him! I resign him; I must do so! and my visit to you also. Papa cannot, as it happens, let me have the horses to-morrow, because he must send his fat sheep to Prora, and mamma wants to make plum-jam. Let me weep and sob out my sorrow in solitude and plum-jam, and keep a little love for your too unhappy
"Meta."
"What absurd nonsense!" said Elsa.
But she did not laugh, but said it, on the contrary, very gravely; read the scrawl again very carefully, and only dropped the letters into her pocket when Aunt Sidonie appeared through the door of the room which opened into the garden and came down the steps towards her.
"I must rest a little," said Sidonie.
"How far have you got?" asked Elsa.
"To an extremely difficult chapter--to the marriage festivities. Malortie leaves me altogether in the dark upon this point. The examples which he gives on page 181 of the second volume, give an immense amount of information, but only of use for the chamberlains at great courts: 'Marriage of their late Majesties'--à la bonne heure! 'Programme of the marriage by proxy of his Majesty the King Don Pedro of Portugal and Algarve'----"
"Who did he marry?" asked Elsa.