Fifteen years are supposed to elapse before the curtain is again rolled up; and that this allusion may be rendered the more perfect, the audience is kept waiting about three times fifteen minutes, to amuse one another during the _entr'acte_. We next learn that _Rudolph_ is seated upon his ducal throne, fortunate in the possession of a paragon-wife, and a steward of the household not to be equalled--no other than _Ottocar_--that particular friend, who, in the prologue, tried to get a finis put to his mortal career. The jocose ruffians here enliven the scene--one by being cast into a dungeon for asking _Ottocar_ (evidently the Colburn of his day), an exorbitant price for the copyright of a certain manuscript; the other, by calling the courtier a man of genius, and being taken into his service, as no doubt, "first robber." To support this character, a change of apparel is necessary: and no wonder, for _Wolfstein_ has on precisely the same clothes he wore fifteen years before. His first job is to steal a casket; but is declined, probably, because _Wolfstein_, being a professor of the capital crime, considers mere larceny _infra dig_. A "second robber" must therefore be hired, and _Ottocar_ has one already preserved in the castle dungeons, in the person of a dumb prisoner. Dummy comes on, and the auditors at once recognise the "brother" who was not murdered in the prologue. He steals the casket, and _Ottocar_ steals off. The duke and duchess next enter into a dialogue, the subject of which is one _Wilhelm_, a young standard-bearer, who appears; and having said a few words exits, that _Ida_, the duchess, might inform us, in a soliloquy, what we have already shrewdly suspected, namely--that the ensign is her son; another presentiment comes into one's mind, which one don't think it fair to the author and his story to entertain till the proper time. A sort of secret interview between the mother and son now takes place, which ends by the imprisonment of the latter; why is not explained at the moment; nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an impassable river, bristling with _chevaux-de-frise_ it is impossible to get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may be surely calculated upon. In the present instance, this formulary is not omitted, for _Wilhelm_ jumps into the river from a bridge which he has contrived to reach. Though several shots are fired into the tank of water that represents the Rhine, there is no hissing; on the contrary, the second act ends amidst general applause; which indeed it deserves, for the scenery is magnificent.