The doors of her suite in the palace were barred against letters addressed to the princess; the delivery of letters to her was interdicted, she consenting, yet she found one: it lay on the broad walk of the orange-trees, between the pleasure and the fruit-gardens, as if dropped by a falcon in mid air.

Ottilia beheld it, and started.

Her little maid walking close by, exclaimed, scuttling round in front of her the while like an urchin in sabots, 'Ha! what is it?
a snake?
let me! let me!' The guileless mistress replied, 'A letter!' Whereupon the maid said: 'Not a window near! and no wall neither! Why, dearest princess, we have walked up and down here a dozen times and not seen it staring at us! Oh, my good heaven!' The letter was seized and opened, and Ottilia read: 'He who loves you with his heart has been cruelly used.

They have shot him.

He is not dead.