The princess fixed her burning eyes on the singer, glanced at the magic characters, ran to the embrasure of a window, and, having examined the scroll for a time, uttered a loud cry, and fell almost suffocated into the arms of the Baroness von Kleist, who, when she saw her tremble, had hurried to her.
"Leave the room, signora," said the favorite, precipitately. "Go into that cabinet, and say nothing. Call no one. Do you understand?"
"No, no; she must not go!" said the princess, faintly. "Let her come hither--here, near me. Ah! my friend," said she, "how great a service you have rendered me!"
Clasping Porporina in her thin white arms, which were animated with a convulsive power, the princess pressed her to her heart, and covered her cheeks with eager burning kisses, which flushed her cheek and terrified her heart.
"Certainly people become mad in this country," thought she. "I have often feared this would be the case with me, and I see more important personages than I am run the same risk. There is madness in the air!"
"The princess at last loosened her neck to clasp her favorite's, crying and weeping, and shouting in the strongest voice;--
"Saved! saved!--my friends!--my kind friends! Trenck has escaped from the fortress of Glatz! He escapes! He is yet--yet at liberty!"
The poor princess had an attack of convulsive laughter, interrupted by sobs, terrible to see and hear.
"Madame! for heaven's sake!" said the baroness, "restrain your joy! Take care lest you be heard!"
Taking up the pretended magic scroll, which was nothing but a letter in cypher from Trenck, she aided her mistress in reading it, in spite of a thousand interruptions of forced and feverish laughter.
Chapter V of the French edition begins here. The translator combined Chapters IV and V with the chapter heading for Chapter V omitted.
"To reduce--thanks to the means which my incomparable mistress has provided for me--the subalterns of the garrison; to effect an understanding with a prisoner as fond of liberty as I am; to give a violent blow to one keeper, a kick to another, and a sword cut to a third; to leap over the rampart, throwing my friend, who did not run as fast as I did, before me (he sprained his ankle as he fell); to pick him up and run thus for fifteen minutes; to cross the Weiss, the water coming up to my waist, through a fog so thick that no one could see beyond his nose; to start from the other bank and travel all night--such a terrible night! to get lost; to go in the snow all around a mountain, without having an idea where I was; to hear the clock of the castle of Glatz strike four--that is to say, to lose time and trouble and see the city walls at dawn; to resume courage to enter a peasant's hut and, with a pistol at his head, get possession of two horses and ride rapidly away;--to regain liberty by a thousand _ruses_, a thousand terrors and sufferings--and then to find oneself without money or clothing, and almost without bread, in an intensely cold and a foreign country: but to see oneself free, after having been doomed to a terrible and fearful captivity; to think of one's adorable mistress; to say that this news will fill her with joy; to make a thousand bold and daring plans to see her--is to be happier than Frederick of Prussia--to be the happiest of men--the elect of Providence!"