him; and it is not your adventurer's way to look too closely into
the nature of the ladder by which he has the chance to climb.

Skilfully, craftily, then, he played the enamoured countess so
long as her fondness for him might be useful, her hostility
detrimental. But once the Colonelcy of the Electoral Guards was
firmly in his grasp, and an intimate friendship had ripened
between himself and Prince Charles--the Elector's younger son--
sufficiently to ensure his future, he plucked off the mask and
allied himself with Sophia in her hostility towards Madame von
Platen. He did worse. Some little time thereafter, whilst on a
visit to the court of Poland, he made one night in his cups a
droll story of the amorous persecution which he had suffered at
Madame von Platen's hands.

It was a tale that set the profligate company in a roar. But
there was one present who afterwards sent a report of it to the
Countess, and you conceive the nature of the emotions it aroused
in her. Her rage was the greater for being stifled. It was
obviously impossible for her to appeal to her lover, the Elector,
to avenge her. From the Elector, above all others, must the
matter be kept concealed. But not on that account would she forgo
the vengeance due. She would present a reckoning in full ere all
was done, and bitterly should the presumptuous young adventurer
who had flouted her be made to pay.

The opportunity was very soon to be afforded her. It arose more
or less directly out of an act in which she indulged her spite
against Sophia. This lay in throwing Melusina Schulemberg into
the arms of the Electoral Prince. Melusina, who was years