Ernestine knelt weeping by the bed of the princess, and implored her to say what frightful accident had so disfigured her. Princess Amelia was incapable of reply! Her lips were convulsively pressed together; she could only stammer out a few inarticulate sounds.
At last Heckel arrived, and when he saw the inflamed, swollen face, the eyeballs starting from their sockets, and then the vessel containing the powerful mixture upon the table, he was filled with horror.
"Ah, the unhappy!" murmured he; "she did not regard my warning. She drew too near the noxious vapor, and it has entered not only her eyes but her windpipe; she will suffer much, and never be wholly restored!"
Amelia understood these words, which were addressed to Fraulein von Haak, and a horrible wild laugh burst from her bloody, skinless lips.
"Will she recover?" asked Fraulein von Haak.
"She will recover, but her eyes will be always deformed and her voice is destroyed. I will hasten to the apothecary's and prepare soothing ointments."
He withdrew, and now another door opened, and the king entered. With hasty steps, and greatly excited, he drew near the bed of the princess. As he looked upon her deformed countenance, her bleeding, rigid eyes, he uttered a cry of horror, and bowed down over his sister.
She gazed up at him steadily; tried to open her lips; tried to speak, but only a dull, hollow sound was heard. Now she slightly raised herself up with a powerful effort of strength, and moved her hand slowly over the white wall near her bed.
"She wishes to write," said the king; "perhaps she will tell the cause of her sufferings. Give her something quickly! there—a coal from the chimney!"
Fraulein von Haak brought the coal, and Amelia wrote, with trembling hand, in great, irregular letters, these words upon the wall: