"Victoria, it is now three months since my visit to the Prison of the Repentant Women. Your beauty, marked with a depth of sadness, seized possession of me at once. I learned why you had been condemned to confinement. Those reasons, once learned, moved me deeply. From that time dates the interest with which you have inspired me. By the intervention of a powerful friend, I am fortunate enough to have secured your release." "Yes, I owe you my liberty," responded she whom he called Victoria, in a virile voice. "And moreover, you have given me, in my misfortune, many proofs of affection." "But the interest I have shown you has other springs than in your misfortune--although that has much augmented it." "What may they be, Franz? Speak--I am listening." The Prince paused in silence for a second, and then asked: "Know you who I am?" "Have you not told me that you were a student in one of the universities of Germany, your native land?" "I deceived you as to my station, Victoria. I am no student." "You deceived me! You whom I thought so true?" "You will soon learn for what cause I hid from you the truth. But first I would make you aware of the nature of the sentiments you inspire in me. I can no longer hold back the confession. Hear me, then, Victoria--" The young woman shuddered, stopped the Prince, and said in tones of bitterness: "Unless I greatly mistake, I foresee the end of this speech, Franz. So before you proceed, and in the hope of sparing you a refusal which would be an insult to you, I must declare that I have not changed since I met you. I must repeat what I said to you in our first interview: My heart is dead to love--one single passion rules me, and that is, vengeance. I have hid from you nothing of the past." "Aye, I know that you have suffered. Victoria, if your heart is dead, mine is no longer mine. I left behind in Germany a young girl, an angel of candor, of virtue, of beauty. She is poor and obscure of birth, but I have sworn before God to make her my wife. I shall remain true to my love and to my oath." "Oh, thanks, Franz, thanks for your confidence. It has lifted from me a fearsome apprehension," said Victoria, with a sigh of joy. "I love you with the tenderness of a sister, or rather, of a friend. For I am no longer a woman, and it would have been cruelty on my part to inspire in you a sentiment I could not share. But what, then, is the nature of your feeling towards me?" "I feel for you the tender compassion due to the sorrows of your childhood and early youth--a profound esteem for the qualities which in you have survived, have overcome, all the causes of your degradation;--and finally, Victoria, I am united to you by an indissoluble bond which reaches into the most distant past--that of kinship."