No. 4.--"You insist upon a rendezvous which you say is by no means secret, as it is to take place in the open street, in one of the most frequented parts of the city, and at a time when the streets are still crowded with pedestrians. You will state yourself, you say, your reasons for declining to comply with my wish, 'however painful such a step may be,' and you vow I shall approve of your motives as soon as I hear them. Are you quite sure of that? But, it is true, you offer to give--I am to receive--and so I must needs give way to your wishes. I cannot, I will not, imagine that you mean to deceive me. You have been so generous towards poor and unhappy people, you will surely not be less so towards a poor unprotected girl. "M. M." No. 5.--"Dear Baron! Once more my heartiest thanks! Thanks also for the delicacy with which you had arranged it all! How much I have wronged you! But could I anticipate that you would make me acquainted with Colonel St. Cyr himself? That I would hear from the lips of that veteran, in my beloved mother-tongue, the heroic death of my father? You would not have it that the colonel should find the daughter of a hero, the last scion of a once rich and illustrious family, in such reduced circumstances; you wished to spare me the mortification of having to receive the Count of St Cyr and Baron Grenwitz in a garret. You preferred to present me to him as the governess of a family whom you knew, and it was after all perfectly right and proper that I should call in your company upon the old gentleman, tired as he was from his long journey, at his hotel. Once more a thousand thanks! Thanks also for the silence by which you honored my renewed grief during the long drive from the hotel to my lodgings! I know how hard it must have been to a man of your liveliness. How have I deserved the interest you take in my fate? Ah! I have been so ill-behaved towards you! You ask me, finally, whether I believe now that you mean it well with me? This letter may give you the answer. You leave the city tomorrow--farewell, and may the enclosed little keepsake, worked by my hand at night, remind you sometimes of "Your grateful "Marie Montbert." "Now the little doll is ready and well trained," said Albert, who read the familiar letter, with a strange and unnatural zeal, over and over again. He sat there like a conjurer studying the rules of a rival in the Black Art. "This Harald, it cannot be denied, was the real Ratcatcher of Hameln. I should like to know what kind of a colonel that was who invented the pretty story of the 'heroic death, shortly before the passage of the Beresina.' Perhaps a colonel of devils; at all events, one of his associates--the thing must have cost Baron Harald an immense amount of money. However, it was spent to some purpose, for in No. 6 he has made great progress!"