and with the utmost
secrecy, she had committed to the care of his Imperial Majesty. This powerful
guardian had in every way watched over the interests of the young Prince. But
the Thirty Years' War had thrown all Germany into distractions, which for a time
thwarted the Emperor, and favoured the views of the usurper. Latterly also
another question had arisen on the city and dependencies of Klosterheim as
distinct from the Landgraviate. These, it was now affirmed, were a female
appanage, and could only pass back to the Landgraves of X-- through a marriage
with the female inheritrix. To reconcile all claims, therefore, on finding this
bar in the way, the Emperor had resolved to promote a marriage for Maximilian
with Paulina, who stood equally related to the Imperial house and to that of her
lover. In this view he had despatched Paulina to Klosterheim, with proper
documents to support the claims of both parties. Of these documents she had been
robbed at Waldenhausen; and the very letter which was designed to introduce
Maximilian as »the child and sole representative of the late murdered
Landgrave,« falling in this surreptitious way into the usurper's hand, had
naturally misdirected his attacks to the person of Paulina.
    For the rest, as regarded the mysterious movements of The Masque, these were
easily explained. Fear, and the exaggerations of fear, had done one half the
work to his hands - by preparing people to fall easy dupes to the plans laid,
and by increasing the romantic wonders of his achievements. Co-operation also on
the part of the very students and others who stood forward as the night watch
for detecting him, had served The Masque no less powerfully. The appearances of
deadly struggles had been arranged artificially to countenance the plot and to
aid the terror. Finally, the secret passages which communicated between the
forest and the chapel of St. Agnes (passages of which many were actually applied
to that very use in the Thirty Years' War) had been unreservedly placed at their
disposal by the Lady Abbess, an early friend of the unhappy Landgravine, who
sympathized deeply with that lady's unmerited sufferings.
    One other explanation followed, communicated in a letter from Maximilian to
the Legate; this related to the murder of the old seneschal, a matter in which
the young Prince took some blame to himself - as having unintentionally drawn
upon that excellent servant his unhappy fate. »The seneschal,« said the writer,
»was the faithful friend of my family, and knew the whole course of its
misfortunes. He continued his abode at the schloss to serve my interest; and