He stared as hard at me as I did at him.

But whereas his smooth, silent, secret face remained with me, and I knew him at a glance, it was, I judged, clean impossible that he could know the beardless stripling in the mustached leader of soldiers, walking well-accustomed and unafraid through palaces.
The man had a letter in his hand, and I saw him deliver it to a maid who came to the dividing curtain to take it.
So there was later news from the city of Thorn within the Palace of Plassenburg than we of the Prince's council of three possessed.

Should I tell our Karl of this encounter?
I thought it might be safer not.

Because the Prince was the last man to attempt to obtain aught from his wife by compulsion, and any question, direct or indirect, might only put her upon her guard.
If I let him into the secret, the Prince would be most likely to stride straight into the Princess's rooms with the brusque words: "Gottfried has seen a letter come to you from your father--what were its contents ?" And that would not suit us at all.
So, rightly or wrongly, I kept the matter from my master, speaking of it only to Dessauer.

And if aught befel from my reticence, it was at least I myself who bore the burden, and, in the final event, paid the penalty..