"The other man! What other man?" said Monsieur Maurice. "My little Gretchen, you are dreaming."
"No, no, I am not dreaming. There was another man--a brown man! Hartmann saw him--"
"A brown man!" echoed Monsieur Maurice. Then catching sight of Hartmann's face, he pushed his chair back, looked at him steadily and sternly; and said, with a sudden change of voice and manner:--
"There is something wrong here. What does it mean? You saw a man--both of you? What was he like?"
"A brown man," I said again. "A brown man with bright eyes."
"And you?" said Monsieur Maurice, turning to Hartmann.
"I--I thought I saw something," stammered the attendant, with a violent effort at composure. "But it was nothing."
Monsieur Maurice looked at him as if he would look him through; got up, still looking at him; went to the sideboard, and, still looking at him, filled another tumbler with Seltzer-water.
The man's lips moved, but he uttered never a word.
"Drink that," said Monsieur Maurice for the second time, and more sternly.
But Hartmann, instead of drinking it, instead of answering, threw up his hands in a wild way, and rushed out of the room.
Monsieur Maurice stood for a moment absorbed in thought; then wrote some words upon a card, and gave the card into my hand.
"For thy father, little one," he said. "Give it to no one but himself, and give it to him the first moment thou seest him. There's matter of life and death in it."
How the King supped, how the King slept, and what he thought of his Château of Augustenburg which he now saw for the first time, are matters respecting which I have no information. I only know that I had fallen asleep on Monsieur Maurice's sofa when Bertha came at ten o'clock that night to fetch me home; that I was very drowsy and unwilling to be moved; and that I woke in the morning dreaming of a brown man with bright eyes, and calling upon Monsieur Maurice to make haste and come before he should again have time to vanish away.
It was a lovely morning; bright and fresh, and sunshiny after the night's storm. My first thought was of Monsieur Maurice, and the card he had entrusted to my keeping. I had it still. My father was not at home when I came back last night. He was in attendance on the King, and did not return till long after I was asleep in my own little bed. This morning, early as I awoke, he was gone again, on the same duty.