With change of condition there was always a change of person. The unhappy princess would come down the stairway in the wall; God would kindly touch her, and lo! she was transformed into a happy Yolanda. Yolanda's light feet would climb the dark stone steps, and God was once more a frowning father. There must also be added Max's share in her emotions. Perhaps she feared the princess as she would have dreaded a rival; since she longed with all her passionate, tender heart to win Max for herself only. It would have been an easy task, as princess, to win him or any man; but if she could win him as Yolanda, the burgher girl, the prize would be the greatest that could fall to a woman. The true situation dawned upon me as I stood before Max and watched Yolanda. I thought of her adroit plan to make trouble with France, and I wanted to shout for joy. The impossible might yet happen. God's hand surely had been in our journeying to Burgundy. Max might yet win this peerless princess, this priceless girl; or, reverse it if you choose, Mary of Burgundy might win this peerless man, and might at the same time attain the unutterable joy of knowing that she had won him for her own sake. Perhaps her yearning had led her to hope that he might in the end be willing to fling behind him his high estate for the sake of a burgher girl. Then, when she had brought him to that resolution, what a joy it would be to turn upon him and say: "I am not a burgher girl. I am Princess Mary of Burgundy, and all these things which you are willing to forego for my sake you may keep, and you may add to them the fair land of Burgundy!" Her high estate and rich domains, now the tokens of her thralldom, would then be her joy, since she could give them to Max. While these bright hopes were filling my mind, Yolanda was playing well her part. She, too, evidently meant to tell no lies, though she might be forced to act many. Her fiery outburst against the Princess of Burgundy astonished Max and almost startled me. Still, the conviction was strong with him that Yolanda was Mary. "If--if you are the princess, Yo--Yolanda," said Max, evidently wavering, "it were ungracious to deceive me." "But I _am_ the princess," cried Yolanda, lifting her head and walking majestically to and fro. "Address me not by that low, plebeian name, Yolanda." She stepped upon a chair and thence to the top of the great oak table that stood in the middle of the room. Drawing the chair up after her she placed it on the table, and, seating herself on this improvised throne, lifted one knee over the other, after the manner of her father. She looked serenely about her in a most amusing imitation of the duke, and spoke with a deep voice:-- "Heralds!" No one responded. So she filled the office of herald herself and cried out:--