nd. If it concerns the
lady who gave you that jewel, I alone can be of assistance.' In his
voice lay so pure a note of truth that the boy instinctively turned to
him trustfully.

'I have a message for the Duke from the lady. If you are a friend to her,
you can tell me how to find him. The lady says I am to go to the castle
and ask for Madame de Ruth, who will take me to his Highness if he has
come back from hunting; then she said all would be well.'

To the boy's astonishment his big questioner suddenly let go his arm,
and, leaning against the house wall, covered his face with his hands,
shivered as though from an ague fit. When the man took his hands from
before his face, the child saw that his eyes were full of tears. The boy
wondered why so many grown-up people were so foolish.

'Quick, boy! take me to her!' he cried.

'No; that is just what I am not to do,' was the reply. 'I am to tell her
where the Duke will meet her to-morrow morning early.'

'To-morrow morning! A million leaden moments! a century to pass! No! Boy,
take me to her! I am the Duke; take me to her, I order you.'

'No; you may be the Duke, but she has given me her commands, and they
mean more to me than yours.' The boy threw up his head proudly. Even in
his passionate impatience Serenissimus was struck by the boy's manner,
amused by this small gentleman.

'Preux Chevalier!' he said laughing; then bowing gravely to the little
muffled figure, 'you are perfectly correct, and I stand reproved; but at
least do me the honour to carry this ring to the lady, and tell her that
I await either her or her sovereign commands.'

The boy took the ring and vanished into the blackness of the side street.
Eberhard Ludwig remained looking after him into the gloom. A bitter
thought came to him of the superiority of this child of the back streets
over the Erbprinz of Wirtemberg--that poor, sickly, excitable boy, whose
disappointing personality was a source of constant irritation and
humiliation to his father. Eberhard Ludwig loved personal vitality, and
that vigorous manliness which he himself possessed, and which he saw
daily in the sons of his poorest subjects; and he suffered intensely
when he was brought into contact with his puny, unwholesome son. The
Duchess's passionate spoiling and injudicious love made matters worse;
the boy's health was in nowise benefited thereby, and it but served to
accentuate the fact that his father had little else save impatient pit