"My kindliest greetings to sweet Agatha! She is your true friend. I always felt that she would counsel nothing that I would not counsel myself. "And another is your friend, too, though you do not think her to be one. You know I am speaking of the Princess. She also will leave your house to-morrow, not without making an attempt to prove to you that she is your friend. Be good to her for my sake; in that case I feel convinced that you will part from her with kind and grateful feelings, and that she herself will have inspired them. Whatever she may say to you, I guarantee its truth. Hers is one of those natures that may go astray, but that can never be untrue. "Should you have a message to send me, send if through your father, whom I shall see in W---- tomorrow. Should I have anything else to say to you, I will send my message through Kurt, whom also I shall meet again to-morrow. "And now remember your promise to be my good and obedient child; and again, and for the last time: _Lebe wohl!_" He had put the letter into an envelope, and now turned in his chair, looking towards the sofa. His young guest was still lying in the same position, only his head had fallen back a little. Perhaps deeper shadows were now falling on the forehead and on the closed, eyes, whilst chin and lips stood out in brighter light and bolder relief; anyhow, the features that appeared so soft awhile ago seemed sharper, and the expression of almost feminine gentleness was turned to one of manly resolution, nay, of angry indignation. "Thus Simon Peter may have contracted his brows, thus his lips may have quivered that night! And yet he could sleep, although he knew what was to happen. Even as this one, knowing, yet sleepeth!" Again he stood by the open window, leaning against it. A dead silence; only at times the night wind came rushing past, and there was rustling and roaring among trees and shrubs. In the village, veiled in mist, a dim red light gleamed faintly here and there. At times confused sounds, as of far-off horses' tramp and the measured step of soldiers on the march, with clashing of arms. Then deep, dead silence again, and then, piercing the deep silence, the half-smothered crow of a cock. Over the edge of yonder mountains the moon--almost at the full--hung, bloody-red, in the vapour which came steaming up from the woods. "Did you look so mournfully up to it that night? And had all the heavenly stars to expire for Him too, that He might remember the heaven within His heart? "Alas! He knew that He was dying for the world. I humbly claim but to die for her,--she is my world. "One cannot choose one's own Gethsemane. One must take it as it comes, whether to the sound of the last trump on the Day of Judgment, ringing through the hearts of all the generations of men, or in deep and world-forgotten loneliness and secrecy, whither human eye shall never penetrate, any more than it penetrates into the nethermost depths of the sea.