The credit of having placed things on the foundation of actuality, of having given events the lead in the direction of a happy issue, must for ever be ascribed to the distinguished gentleman who had up till now wisely kept in the background, but at the right moment intervened carefully but firmly. I refer to Excellency von Knobelsdorff, Minister of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the Grand Ducal Household. Dr. Ueberbein had been correct in his assertion that the President of the Council had kept himself posted in the stages of Klaus Heinrich's love affair. What is more, well served by intelligent and sagacious assistants, he had kept himself well in touch with the state of public opinion, with the rôle which Samuel Spoelmann and his daughter played in the imaginative powers of the people, with the royal rank with which the popular idea invested them, with the great and superstitious tension with which the population followed the intercourse between the Schlosses "Hermitage" and Delphinenort, with the popularity of that intercourse: in a word, he was well aware how the Spoelmanns, for everyone who did not deliberately shut his eyes, were the general topic of conversation and rumour, not only in the capital, but in the whole country. A characteristic incident was enough to make Herr Knobelsdorff sure of his ground. At the beginning of October--the Landtag had been opened a fortnight before, and the disputes with the Budget Commission were in full swing--Imma Spoelmann fell ill, very seriously ill, so it was said at first. It seemed that the imprudent girl, for some whim or mood, while out with her countess, had ventured on a gallop of nearly half an hour's duration on her white Fatma in the teeth of a strong north-east wind, and had come home with an attack of congestion of the lungs, which threatened to end her altogether. The news soon got about. People said the girl was hovering between life and death, which, as luckily soon emerged, was a great exaggeration. But the consternation, the general sympathy, could not have been greater if a serious accident had happened to a member of the House of Grimmburg, even to the Grand Duke himself. It was the sole topic of conversation. In the humbler parts of the city, near the Dorothea Hospital for instance, the women stood in the evening outside their front doors, pressed the palms of their hands against their breasts, and coughed, as if to show each other what it meant to be short of breath. The evening papers published searching and expert news of the condition of Miss Spoelmann, which passed from hand to hand, were read at family gatherings and cafés, and were discussed in the tram-cars. The _Courier's_ reporter had been seen to drive in a cab to Delphinenort, where, in the hall with the mosaic floor, he had been snubbed by the Spoelmanns' butler, and had talked English to him--though he found that no easy task.