"How beautiful you are, beloved Ludovicka! My Electoral Princess! come, let us go to the altar! Oh, your good, kind friends! How I thank them! How well they have arranged everything! Come! You see, the priest is waiting!"
"Not yet, beloved! For you see before the priest stands the notary, and my good friends will have us go through all the formalities of legal marriage. Before we are married we must sign the contract!"
"The contract of love is written in our hearts alone. What need for the intervention of signatures on paper? And how can strangers know what we alone can settle with one another? I swear unswerving love and fidelity to my Electoral Princess, and that requires no written confirmation. Come to the altar, dearest!"
He endeavors to draw her forward, but Ludovicka flings her arm about his neck and holds him back. "Beloved," she whispers, "the contract which we sign concerns not us, but the benevolent, mighty friends, who have lent us their aid, and will help us still further. Ah! without these noble friends our flight would have been wholly impossible, and we would have been separated for ever! To-morrow I would have been the bride of the Prince of Hesse, and your father would already have found means to compel your return home. Ah! beloved, they would have separated us, if our noble friends had not helped us. They have prepared everything, cared for everything. As soon as we are married, we shall journey away to our safe asylum, and there, under the protection of friends, be sheltered and secure. For such love and devotion we must be grateful, must we not?"
"Certainly, that we must, and shall be gladly, beloved of my heart! Let them say how we can prove our gratitude, and certainly it shall be done!"
"They have said it, and written it down in the contract. Come, dearest, we will sign it, and then to the altar."
She throws her arm around his neck, she draws him to the table where stands the notary with his witnesses. She hands him the pen and looks at him with a sweet smile.
Venus! Venus ever!
But he? He is no longer Endymion! He is the Electoral Prince Frederick William! And strange! like a dream, like a greeting from afar, conies stealing to his ears, "Be a good man."
"Take the pen and sign!" whispers Venus, with glowing looks of love.