About six months after the secret trial of the unfortunate General I had accompanied the Crown-Prince on a visit to the Quirinal, and one afternoon while strolling along the Corso, in Rome, suddenly came face to face with the dainty little figure of Fräulein Elise Breitenbach. In delight I took her into Ronzi's, the noted confectioner's at the corner of the Piazza Colonna, and there, at one of the little tables, she explained to me how she and her mother, having become acquainted with Franz Seeliger--not knowing him to be the General's son--they suddenly fell under the suspicion of the Berlin Secret Police, and, though much puzzled, did not again come to Court. Some weeks later mother and daughter chanced to be in Paris, and one day called at Seeliger's rooms in the Rue de Provence, but he was out. They, however, were shown into his room to wait, and there saw upon his table an abusive and scurrilous typewritten letter in German addressed to the Emperor. Then it suddenly dawned upon them that the affable young man might be the actual author of those infamous letters. It was this visit which, no doubt, revealed to the Baron the young man's hiding-place. Both mother and daughter, however, kept their own counsel, met Seeliger next day, and watched, subsequently learning, to their surprise, that he was the son of General von Trautmann, and, further, that he had as a friend one of the personal valets of the Emperor, from whom, no doubt, he obtained his inside information about persons at Court. "When his poor father was sentenced we knew that the young man was living in Brussels, and at once went there in order to induce him to come forward, make confession, and so save the General from disgrace," said the pretty girl seated before me. "On arrival we saw him alone, and told him what we had discovered in the Rue de Provence, whereupon he admitted to us that he had written all the letters, and announced that he intended to return to Berlin next day and give himself up to the police in order to secure his father's release." "And why did he not do so?" I asked eagerly. "Because next morning he was found dead in his bed in the hotel." "Ah, suicide." "No," was her half-whispered reply. "He had been strangled by an unknown hand--deliberately murdered, as the Brussels police declared. They were, of course, much mystified, for they did not know, as we know, that neither the young man's presence nor his confession were desired in Berlin." Fearing the Emperor's wrath, the Breitenbachs, like myself, dare not reveal what they knew--the truth, which is here set down for the first time--and, alas! poor General von Trautmann died in prison at Mulheim last year. SECRET NUMBER THREE HOW THE KAISER PERSECUTED A PRINCESS