"Fly, Marguerite! All is lost! The detested one is coming quickly. All my science, knowledge, and skill are of no avail to me as against the dark fate and destiny about to overtake me at the very culminating point of my career. "Marguerite, I have initiated you into mysteries which would have annihilated any ordinary woman had she endeavoured to comprehend them. But you, with your exceptional mental powers, and firm, strong will and resolution, have been a worthy pupil to the deeply experienced master. Your help has been most precious to me. It was through you that I controlled Angelica's mind, and all her inner being. And, to reward you, it was my desire to prepare for you the bliss of your life, according to the manner in which your heart conceived it; and I dared to enter within circles the most mysterious, the most perilous. I undertook operations which often terrified even myself. In vain. Fly, or your destruction is certain. Until the supreme moment comes I shall battle bravely on against the hostile powers. But I know well that that supreme moment brings to me instant death. But I will die all alone. When the supreme moment comes I shall go to that mysterious tree, under whose shadow I have so often spoken to you of the wondrous secrets which were known to me, and at my command. "Marguerite, keep aloof from those secrets for evermore. Nature, terrible mother, angry when her precocious children prematurely pry into her secrets and pluck at the veil which covers her mysteries, throws to them some glittering toy which lures them on until its destroying power is directed against them. I myself once caused the death of a woman, who perished at the very moment when I thought I was going to take her to my heart with the most fervid affection; and this paralysed my powers. Yet, dolt that I was, I still thought I should find bliss here on earth. Farewell, Marguerite, farewell. Go back to your own country. Go to S----. The Chevalier de T---- will charge himself with your welfare and happiness. Farewell." As Dagobert read this letter, all the auditors felt an inward shudder, and Madame von G---- said, "I shall be compelled to believe in things which my whole heart and soul refuse to credit. However, I certainly never could understand now it was that Angelica forgot Moritz so quickly and devoted herself to the Count. At the same time I cannot but remember that she was all the time in an extraordinary, unnatural condition of excitement, and that was a circumstance which filled me with the most torturing anxiety. I remember that her inclination for the Count showed itself at first in a very strange way. She told me she used to have the most vivid and delightful dreams of him nearly every night."