to
be called the first act--ends.

Fifteen years are supposed to elapse before the curtain is again rolled
up; and that this allusion may be rendered the more perfect, the audience
is kept waiting about three times fifteen minutes, to amuse one another
during the _entr'acte_. We next learn that _Rudolph_ is seated upon his
ducal throne, fortunate in the possession of a paragon-wife, and a steward
of the household not to be equalled--no other than _Ottocar_--that
particular friend, who, in the prologue, tried to get a finis put to his
mortal career. The jocose ruffians here enliven the scene--one by being
cast into a dungeon for asking _Ottocar_ (evidently the Colburn of his
day), an exorbitant price for the copyright of a certain manuscript; the
other, by calling the courtier a man of genius, and being taken into his
service, as no doubt, "first robber." To support this character, a change
of apparel is necessary: and no wonder, for _Wolfstein_ has on precisely
the same clothes he wore fifteen years before.

His first job is to steal a casket; but is declined, probably, because
_Wolfstein_, being a professor of the capital crime, considers mere
larceny _infra dig_. A "second robber" must therefore be hired, and
_Ottocar_ has one already preserved in the castle dungeons, in the person
of a dumb prisoner. Dummy comes on, and the auditors at once recognise the
"brother" who was not murdered in the prologue. He steals the casket, and
_Ottocar_ steals off.

The duke and duchess next enter into a dialogue, the subject of which is
one _Wilhelm_, a young standard-bearer, who appears; and having said a few
words exits, that _Ida_, the duchess, might inform us, in a soliloquy,
what we have already shrewdly suspected, namely--that the ensign is her
son; another presentiment comes into one's mind, which one don't think it
fair to the author and his story to entertain till the proper time. A sort
of secret interview between the mother and son now takes place, which ends
by the imprisonment of the latter; why is not explained at the moment;
nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one
sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an
impassable river, bristling with _chevaux-de-frise_ it is impossible to
get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may
be surely calculated upon. In the present instance, this formulary is not
omitted, for _Wilhelm_ jumps into