"It was not funny then, Max. Not to get to fight. enraged I could have killed Victor."

"Hoffmann's men did that.

1 The butcher!

I was 80

"Yes, but Hoffmann was not the revolution, Maxie. He was just a mercenary. They had him shot, you know, after. He was a loud fool. But that was the reason for the plan. If he had not been a fool--?" Rudolphe shrugged. "Hoffmann said he was going to cap- ture the palace and carry off the princess and execute her properly. As if revolutions are only for the purpose of ravishing the royal- ty."

"What a joke on him, eh?"

"Yes, the royal family went off to Paris three days before and I became the princess--to let Hoffmann carry me off in her place so that I could spy. ach, what foolishness!

•

•

H

每鳗

"In those days it was all foolish, the visitor said. "All that senseless killing. But we were very brave then, Rudy. For six hours the guardsmen held the wall. The dead were piled up right to the top. Four cannon Hoffmann had to use to breach the wall, and still we fought. But that was the end; they came in waves. It was the new order, Rudy, if we had known it then. We could not stop it, but how we fought! And Victor, too."

"I know. He had to rush right back to the wall when we got to the palace. We were to find a maid to help me dress, but there was no one. Just no one! They had all run off. Victor growled the way he did and told me to look like a princess ʼn case Hoffmann came, and back he went."

it.

"He took four men with one swipe of his saber, Rudy. I saw But then he went down. Hoffmann's men just poured in.

"How did you get away,

Max?"

We dug

"Herman and I, a caisson turned over and buried us. our way out. By then it was over, just torchlight and powder smoke. We crept through the lines, fat Herman and I, going for the army. By the time we got there the army was no more--the country was no more."

duke.

"Yes, then a bigger war started; when that fool shot the arch- Oh, those were the days for shooting royalty. Ours were

26.