asure and delight you experience there? Do you
remember how you lamented that we could not enjoy this glorious
companionship together, that I could not be there at your side? Well, see,
beloved, now you must admit how much I love you, and how ready I am to
please you. I have in perfect secrecy and silence had myself initiated
into the order of the Media Nocte."

"You have done that?" cried the Prince, in joyful astonishment. "You
belong to this glorious company of great minds, naming hearts, and noble
souls? Oh, my Ludovicka, I recognize your love in this, and I thank you,
and am proud of it that my betrothed belongs to the genial, the
intellectual, and the elect. Oh, you are not merely my destined bride, you
are my muse, my goddess, and in humility I bow my head before you, and I
kiss the hem of your robe, beloved mistress, chosen one!"

He bent his knee and kissed her robe, and bowed lower to kiss the tiny
foot in its blue satin shoe. Then he raised one of these pretty feet and
kissed it again, and placed it on his breast, holding it fast there with
both his hands.

"Mistress," he whispered, lifting up to her his countenance, beaming with
love and enthusiasm--"mistress, your slave lies before you. Crush me, let
me be dust beneath your feet, if you do not love me; let me die here, or
swear to me that you will ever love me, that to-morrow night you will link
your destiny indissolubly with mine!"

"I will ever love you," she breathed forth, with a magical smile;
"to-morrow night I will link my fate to yours."

"Give me a pledge of your vow, a sign, a token of this hour!" entreated
he, still holding the little foot between his hands.

"What sort of pledge do you require, beloved of my heart? Ask, command;
whatever it may be, it shall be yours!"

With beaming, happy look he gazed upon her glowing countenance, and nodded
to her, and whispered words full of tenderness and love, and at the same
time with fondling hand loosened the silver buckle which fastened the blue
satin shoe upon her foot, drew off the slipper from her little foot, whose
rosy hue was transparent through the white silk stocking, and smilingly
thrust it into the breast pocket of his velvet jacket. "But, Frederick, my
shoe--give me back my shoe," said she, laughing; and her little hand and
wondrous arm dived into his pocket to recover the stolen shoe. But the
Prince held fast the little hand, whose warm, soft touch he felt to the
deepest recesses of h