"Where is the letter?"
"Where all the others are." And he lifted the cover from the basket and pointed to the collection within of yet unopened correspondence.
The district commissioner raised his hands with a little deprecating gesture, as he whispered anxiously: "But your Excellency, these are in the Emperor's handwriting; they should not lie here; they are urgent, surely?"
His Excellency looked at the speaker as a fencer measures his antagonist.
"Urgent, are they?"
The district commissioner looked puzzled.
"Your Excellency," he began, "this affair is not done with. His Majesty has sent a second letter to me by special courier, and I have read it. He orders me in it to come to you immediately, and express the gravest disapproval that Mathias Ráby, notwithstanding the imperial safe conduct, has been made a prisoner and placed in the dungeon of the Assembly House, among the scum of convicted criminals. I am to take care that he is released, and that he is allowed to defend himself as a free man without hindrance."
"That procedure won't be according to our laws."
"Perhaps not, but in view of the accusation brought against Ráby, his Majesty orders that he be detained in a place of confinement more befitting his rank and calling."
"That shall be done," said his Excellency, and therewith he rang the bell.