door, on a shining brass plate, was engraved the name of Count von Kotte.
Baron von Moudenfels pulled this bell so violently that it echoed loudly,
and at the door, which instantly opened, appeared a liveried servant with
an angry face, muttering with tolerable distinctness something about
unseemly noise and rude manners.

"Is Count von Kotte at home?" asked the baron hastily.

"No," muttered the lackey, "the count isn't at home, and it wasn't
necessary to ring so horribly loud to ask the question."

He stepped back and was about to close the door again, but the baron thrust
his foot between it and the frame and seized the man's sleeve.

"My good fellow, I _must_ see the count," he said imperiously.

"But when I tell you that the count isn't--"

He stopped suddenly in the middle of his sentence and cast a stolen glance
at the florin which the baron had pressed into his hand.

"Announce me to Count von Kotte," said the baron pleasantly. "He will
certainly receive me."

"Your name, sir?" asked the lackey respectfully.

"Commissioner Kraus," was the reply. The man withdrew, and, a few minutes
after, returned with a smiling face.

"The count is at home and begs the gentleman to come in," he said, throwing
the door wide open and standing respectfully beside it.

Commissioner Kraus, smiling, stepped past him into the anteroom. A door on
the opposite side opened, and the tall figure of a man attired in the
Austrian uniform appeared.

"Is it really you, my dear Kraus!" he cried. "So you have returned already.
Come, come, I have longed to see you."

Holding out his hand to the visitor, he drew him hastily into the next
room.

"You have longed to see me, my dear count," said Kraus, laughing, "and yet
I was within an ace of being turned from your door. Since when have you
lived in a barricaded apartment, count?"

"Since the spies of the French governor of Vienna, Count Andreossy, have
watched my door and pursued my every step," replied the count, smiling.
"But now speak, my dear Kraus. You went to Totis? You talked with the
Emperor Francis?"

"I went to Totis and talked with the Emperor Francis."

"Good heavens! you say it with such a gloomy, solemn expression. Has the
emperor become irresolute?"

"Yes, that is it. The emperor is surrounded by adherents of the Napoleonic
party; they have succeeded in thrusting back the real patriots, the
Anti-Bonapartists, and would have rendered them wholly inactive had not