I FIND A SECOND I meant to go directly to the Prince in his chamber and tell him that from this time forth Helene and I had resolved to battle out our lives together.

But it chanced that I passed through the higher terrace on my way to the lower--a bosky place of woods, where the Prince loved to linger in of a summer afternoon, drowsing there to the singing of birds and the falling of waters.

For our Karl had tastes quite beyond sour black Casimir, with his church-yard glooms and raw-bone terrors.
On the upper terrace I found Von Reuss, lolling against the parapet with other blue flittermice, his peers--he himself no flittermouse, indeed, but of the true Casimir vampire breed, horrid of tooth, nocturnal, desirous of lusts and blood.
At sight of him I went straight at mine enemy, as if I had been leading a charge.
"Sir," said I, "you are a base rascal.

You have insulted the Lady Helene, maid of honor to the Princess, the adopted child of my father.

Her wrongs are mine.