“Ah, you are come at last,” said she, as the door opened. “I was about to seek you. I feared you could not find the paper.”
“It was very difficult to find amongst such a mass of letters and papers,” said Mademoiselle Marwitz, whose suspicious glance was now wandering round the room. “I succeeded, however, at last; here is the manuscript, your highness.”
The princess took it and examined it carefully. “Ah, I thought so,” she said. “A monologue which Voltaire wrote for me, is missing. I gave it to the king, and I sec he has not returned it. I think my memory is the only faculty which retains its power. It is my misfortune that I cannot forget! I will test it to-day and try to write this monologue from memory. I must be alone, however. I pray you, mademoiselle, to go into the saloon with Pollnitz; he can entertain you with the Chronique Scandaleuse of our most virtuous court, while I am writing.—And now,” said she, when she found herself alone, “may God give me power to reach the heart of the duke, and win him to my purpose!”
With a firm hand she wrote:
“Because you are happy, duke, you will have pity for the wretched. For a few days past, you have had your young and lovely wife at your side, and experienced the pure bliss of a happy union; you will therefore comprehend the despair of those who love as fondly, and can never be united. And now, I would remind you of a day on which it was in my power to obtain for you a great favor from my brother the king. At that time you promised me to return this service tenfold, should it ever be in your power, and you made me promise, if I should ever need assistance, to turn to you alone! My hour has come! I need your help; not for myself! God and death alone can help me. I demand your aid for a man who is chained with me to the galleys. You know him—have mercy upon him! Perhaps he will arrive at your court in the same hour with my letter. Duke, will you be the jailer of the wretched and the powerless, who is imprisoned only because I am the daughter of a king? Are your officers constables? will you allow them to cast into an eternal prison him for whom I have wept night and day for many long years?”
“Oh, my God! My God! you have given wings to the birds of the air; you have given to the horse his fiery speed; you have declared that man is the king of creation; you have marked upon his brow the seal of freedom, and this is his holiest possession. Oh, friend, will you consent that a noble gentleman, who has nothing left but his freedom, shall be unjustly deprived of it! Duke, I call upon you! Be a providence for my unhappy friend, and set him at liberty. And through my whole life long I will bless and honor you! AMELIA.”
“If he does not listen to this outcry of my soul,” she whispered, as she folded and sealed the letter—“if he has the cruelty to let me plead in vain, then in my death-hour I will curse him, and charge him with being the murderer of my last hope!”
The princess called Pollnitz, and, with an expressive glance, she handed him the letter.
“Truly, my memory has not failed me,” she said to Mademoiselle Marwitz, who entered behind Pollnitz, and whose sharp eyes were fixed upon the letter in the baron’s hand. “I have been able to write the whole monologue. Give this paper to my brother, Pollnitz; I have added a few friendly lines, and excused myself for declining the invitation. I cannot see this drama.”
“Well, it seems to me I have made a lucrative affair of this,” said Pollnitz to himself, as he left the princess. “I promised Weingarten only fifty louis d’or, so fifty remain over for myself, without counting the ducats which the princess intends for me. Besides, I shall be no such fool as to give my servant, who steals from me every day, the reward the princess has set apart for him; and if I give him outside work to do, it is my opportunity; he is my slave, and the reward is properly mine.”