Who wrote it? Not even as to the admission-ticket of this cartel could the servant make any deposition. Who wrote it? Julienne; to this point, at least, all roads of probability converged; only in that case mysteries lay round about him. Significant was the French subscription, which stood in like manner exactly under the picture of his sister, which his father had given him on Isola Bella;[38] but that might be a coincidence. He investigated now these new silver-veins of his Diana-[39] and family-tree by the touchstone of his whole history. His mother and Julienne's had gone to Italy with his father in one and the same year; both had been uncommon women and mutual friends, and his father the friend of both. There was the possibility of a false step on the part of his father, which had been concealed. Quite as easily might the traces of this error have been shown to Julienne. Then, further, the hypothesis of her sisterly love would throw light on her whole previous winding course; her affectionate interest in Albano; her love-race with the Princess; her correspondence with his father; her enlisting of the Count's affection for Romeiro, which, as it seemed, heated her quite as much against the Princess as it chilled her toward Liana; above all, the singularity of her love for him, which never unfolded itself further and more openly;--all this gave ground to suspect that it might be only a sister's kindred blood which blazed so often on her round cheeks, when she had unconsciously gazed at him too long. After this step he made forthwith the leap; he now suspected, also, that she alone had sought to dazzle and delude him into the love of her Linda with the magic mirror of spiritual existences. As respects the relation of the Princess to the Minister, every word upon that subject was to him a lie. He was quite as reluctant to let himself part with a good opinion of others as a bad one. Ordinary men readily give the good opinion away and hold the bad one fast; weaker ones are easily reconciled, and hardly parted. He was unlike either. Hitherto he had so easily ascribed in his own mind the Princess's friendship for the Minister, her visitation journeys with him through the land, and the like, to her manly prudence and foresight, which would fain at once keep watch over the future hereditary land of her brother and hold the key to it; and to this probability, as the Minister accommodated himself equally well to the related parts of a cicerone and an overseer, he still adhered. The following week brought along a circumstance, which seemed to throw a greater light into the dark billet. 91. CYCLE. The promised circumstance has its root again in older circumstances which occurred between the Princess and the Minister; these I here premise.