“I have just reached Stockholm, and find the Count de Rosenstein here. I shall not be obliged, therefore, to go on to Colmar, and shall set out on my return on the 10th instant, to embrace you again, and comfort you, and take care of you, and to indulge with you in new dreams of happiness, since God has once more blessed our union. I send you this by express, to put you at ease about my journey, which was not all unpleasant, though so fatiguing that I congratulated myself more than once upon my prudence in not bringing you with me, in the situation in which you are. As far as to Falun, I had to ride on horseback the whole way. Farewell, then, my love, until the 15th or 16th, at latest. We shall have no lawsuit with Rosenstein; it will be all arranged.
“I love you.
“Adelstan de Waldemora.”
“M. Goefle,” said Christian to the lawyer, who was silently refolding the dress, “does it not seem to you horribly sad to find this letter of love and conjugal happiness among the clothes of this dead lady?”
“It is melancholy!” replied M. Goefle, taking off his spectacles and his extempore turban. “And so very strange! Do you know that this letter has set me to thinking? But the poor baroness was mistaken; she was not pregnant, for she made a voluntary declaration to that effect; Stenson told me so to-day. He was present when she signed it. But let’s see the date of that letter.”
M. Goefle replaced his spectacles, and read: “Stockholm, 5th March, 1746.”
“Yes,” he continued, “that agrees, if I remember right. Pshaw! That story is too sad for a man who wants to amuse himself. But I will keep the note, however; it might suggest something. I will examine my father’s papers again. But come, Christian, have you given up the idea of disguising yourself?”
“With those old clothes that smell of the grave? Yes indeed! they have chilled me to the marrow of my bones. She was virtuous, cultivated and beautiful, you told me this morning; the pearl of Dalecarlia! And she died quite young, did she not?”
“At twenty-five or twenty-six; about ten months after the date of this note: it was in March, 1746, that Baron Adelstan was assassinated. These are probably the last words he ever wrote to his wife, and probably that is the reason she carried the letter in her pocket until her death.”
“How unfortunate she was!” said Christian. “A young wife, a young mother, suddenly left a widow and childless; and then to die a victim to the baron’s hatred—”