her handsome, reckless son, the very image of her lost husband, the
favorite of women, and the gayest youth among the young nobles who
composed the chariot-guard of the king.

How fully he had written to-day--he who weilded the reed-pen so
laboriously.

This really was a letter; while, usually, he only asked in the fewest
words for fresh funds for the gratification of his extravagant tastes.

This time she might look for thanks, for not long since he must have
received a considerable supply, which she had abstracted from the income
of the possessions entrusted to her by her son-in-law.

She began to read.

The cheerfulness, with which she had met the dwarf, was insincere, and
had resembled the brilliant colors of the rainbow, which gleam over the
stagnant waters of a bog. A stone falls into the pool, the colors
vanish, dim mists rise up, and it becomes foul and clouded.

The news which her son's letter contained fell, indeed, like a block of
stone on Katuti's soul.

Our deepest sorrows always flow from the same source as might have filled
us with joy, and those wounds burn the fiercest which are inflicted by a
hand we love.

The farther Katuti went in the lamentably incorrect epistle--which she
could only decipher with difficulty--which her darling had written to