The Princess sought him all the evening less than usual. At last he took his respectful leave of the whole court, but with the prospect of creeping, not, like them, under silk quilts, but under cold bowers. He even marched--sure of himself--up the stairway, opened the library-chamber, found the spring, touched it, and stepped through the tapestry door into the princely--bedchamber. "It is certain, then," said he, and cursed about him inwardly to his heart's content, lying prostrate and crushed quite flat beneath the love-letter weight. In the side chamber on the left hand he already heard her and a chambermaid, who was undressing her. On the right the door of a second but lighted chamber stood ajar. He stood long in doubt whether he should step into that, or stay where he was under the light-screen of a dark corner. At last he laid hold of the protection of night. During his suspense and her disrobing, he had time to rehearse or read over his part; now he came to an agreement with himself, in case of necessity,--and if he should find himself pushed too hard--and all the more, as the place would speak more against _her_ than against _him_, inasmuch as every one must needs ask, whether he could otherwise have possibly gained admission,--in such a case of necessity, where only the choice between a satire and a satyr was left him, he determined to transform himself on the spot into a respectful--Faun. Directly the Princess strode in, but in the direction of the illuminated chamber. "I have no further occasion for thee," she called back to the chambermaid. "_Diable!_" screamed she, in the bedchamber, spying out the tall Minister; "who stands there? Hanna, a light! _Ciel!_" she continued, recognizing him, but continuing to speak French, because Hanna understood nothing of that. "_Mais, Monsieur! Me voila donc compromise! Quelle méprise! Vous vous etes trompé de chambres! Pardonnéz, Monsieur, que je sauve les déhors de mon sexe et de mon rang. Comment avez-vous-pu_--" She uttered all this, perhaps, by way of blinding the German witness, with an angry accent. The grand-godfather--who, after all previous gratifications, felt like a cock, who has gulped down many live chafers, and is now threatened with his life by their sticking in his distressed crop--kept not silence, but replied in German, opening the tapestry door, meanwhile, that he had, even as she commanded, laid the books out of the library in the lighted chamber, and had been caught _in transitu_. He went immediately through the tapestry; but she could hardly contain herself for terror, had the physician called in the morning, and sent back her retinue. Froulay--however much like the Spanish he found his romances, among which, according to Fisher's assertion, the thieves' literature is the best--at last did not know, himself, what to make of it.