"The letter to the latter, in which I told him I should come here if I lived, of course I placed in the ebony casket with something else that was worth more to me than all the diamonds in the world; it was the certificate of my marriage to Prince Adalbert of Rittersheim at the little church of the remote mountain village in Aquazilia.
"I was far more fearful of losing that than all my fortune. It was the certificate of my honour and my son's birthright. I knew that if the Duke Waldemar once got it into his possession he could demand any price from me for its return.
"It was late in the morning, a dull foggy November morning, when I had finished sealing the packets and locked them away in the steel safe with my own key. The one I had given you was the only duplicate in existence; they both bore my father's initial C, he was Carlo the Third of Aquazilia.
"Having left directions on a paper which you could see within the safe when you opened it, I carefully locked it and hid my own key under a special place in the carpet.
"I intended then to write to you at once and tell you to come and open the safe, whatever might happen to me, for I believed that its hiding-place would not easily be discovered, but I never had this chance.
"Exhausted with want of sleep, I went back to my room and threw myself on my bed, half dressed as I was, with my white silk dressing-robe on in which I had sat writing half the night.
"I at once fell asleep and must have slept for hours, for it was dark again when I awoke, and then I was called back to consciousness by having my arm roughly shaken. I found the Duke Waldemar and two other men in my room.
"He at once demanded to know the whereabouts of the steel safe with the diamonds, and held a naked knife to my throat to force me to tell him.
"Life was of very little value to me in comparison with the needs of the poor for whom I was determined to preserve the riches.
"Each time I refused to tell him he pressed the knife closer to my throat, until it cut into the flesh, and I felt the warm blood trickling down on to my white dressing-robe.