“I am so glad,” said she, “that my friends chance to be yours also! How did you become acquainted with the Von Lengefeld family?”
“We are old acquaintances!” replied Schiller, smiling. “I made the acquaintance of these ladies four years ago while residing in Madame von Wollzogen’s house, soon after my flight from Stuttgart, and it was her son, my friend, William von Wollzogen, who took me to see them in Rudolstadt.”[47]
“Rumor says that Mr. William von Wollzogen loves his cousin Caroline devotedly.”
“And for once, rumor has, as I believe, told the truth. Wollzogen loves his beautiful cousin passionately.”
“And Caroline, does she love him?”
“Who can fathom the heart of this noble woman! Her lips are sealed by the solemn vow which united her with her unloved husband, and Caroline von Beulwitz is too noble and chaste a woman to become untrue even to an unloved husband, and—” Schiller hesitated; he now felt how deeply his words must have wounded the woman who stood at his side—the woman over whom be had just pronounced judgment. But women have a wonderful knack of not hearing what they do not wish to hear, and of smiling even when stabbed to the heart.
Charlotte von Kalb smiled on Schiller as though his words had not wounded her in the slightest degree.
“And has Charlotte, has this poor child, at last recovered from her unhappy love? Have the bleeding wounds of her young heart at last been healed?”
Madame von Kalb, her countenance wreathed in smiles, had drawn the dagger from her own heart and plunged it into her lover’s. “Paete, Paete, non dolet!”