Early the next morning Paulina and her servant were summoned to resume their journey; and three hours more of rapid travelling brought them to the frowning fortress of Lovenstein. Their escort, with any one of whom they had found but few opportunities of communicating, had shown themselves throughout gloomy and obstinately silent. They knew not, therefore, to what distance their journey extended. But, from the elaborate ceremonies with which they were here received, and the formal receipt for their persons, which was drawn up and delivered by the governor to the officer commanding their escort, Paulina judged that the castle of Lovenstein would prove to be their final destination. CHAPTER XXIII. Two days elapsed without any change in Paulina's situation, as she found it arranged upon her first arrival at Lovenstein. Her rooms were not incommodious; but the massy barricades at the doors, the grated windows, and the sentinels who mounted guard upon all the avenues which led to her apartments, satisfied her sufficiently that she was a prisoner. The third morning after her arrival brought her a still more unwelcome proof of this melancholy truth, in the summons which she received to attend a court of criminal justice on the succeeding day, connected with the tenor of its language. Her heart died within her as she found herself called upon to answer as a delinquent on a charge of treasonable conspiracy with various members of the university of Klosterheim, against the sovereign prince, the Landgrave of X----. Witnesses in exculpation, whom could she produce? Or how defend herself before a tribunal where all alike--judge, evidence, accuser---were in effect one and the same malignant enemy? In what way she could have come to be connected in the Landgrave's mind with a charge of treason against his princely rights, she found it difficult to explain, unless the mere fact of having carried the imperial despatches in the trunks about her carriages were sufficient to implicate her as a secret emissary or agent concerned in the imperial diplomacy. But she strongly suspected that some deep misapprehension existed in the Landgrave's mind; and its origin, she fancied, might be found in the refined knavery of their ruffian host at Waldenhausen, in making his market of the papers which he had purloined. Bringing them forward separately and by piecemeal, he had probably hoped to receive so many separate rewards. But, as it would often happen that one paper was necessary in the way of explanation to another, and the whole, perhaps, were almost essential to the proper understanding of any one, the result would inevitably be grievously to mislead the Landgrave. Further communications, indeed, would have tended to disabuse the prince of any delusions raised in this way. But it was probable, as Paulina had recently learned in passing through Waldenhausen, that the ruffian's illness and delirium had put a stop to any further communication of