"A letter and packet from the queen,"
he said, wonderingly opening the letter first. Casting a hasty
glance through it, a mocking smile crossed his face. "She sends me a
French translation of a prayer-book," he said, shrugging his
shoulders. "Poor queen! her heart is not yet dead, though, by
Heaven! it has suffered enough."
He threw the letter carelessly aside, without glancing at the book;
its sad, pleading prayer was but an echo of the thoughts trembling
in her heart.
"Bagatelles! nothing more," he murmured, after reading the other
letters and laying them aside. He then rang hastily, and bade the
servant send Baron Pollnitz to him as soon as he appeared in the
audience-chamber.
A few minutes later the door opened, and the old, wrinkled, sweetly
smiling face of the undaunted courtier appeared.
"Approach," said the king, advancing a few steps to meet him. "Do
you bring me his submission? Does my brother Henry acknowledge that
it is vain to defy my power?"
Pollnitz shrugged his shoulders. "Sire, "he said, sighing, "his
highness will not understand that a prince must have no heart. He
still continues in his disobedience, and declares that no man should
marry a woman without loving her; that he would be contemptible and
cowardly to allow himself to be forced to do what should be the free
choice of his own heart.
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